King of All I Survey-Chapter 179: Meltdown! No, not that Kind

"Joe, you can prevent that from working against us, right?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Wait a minute," Dad cut in, "That means you could have prevented it there, too. Doesn’t it?"

I looked at Dad, surprised.

"Yes," Joe said simply.

"Dad, that’s not fair. He doesn’t interfere with what living things do unless it’s something that could destroy the universe."

"Really!" Dad’s voice was getting louder. "He only interferes if it’s something that puts him in danger personally. That’s what you’re saying, Tim. Joe doesn’t give f...," Dad glanced at me, as he almost said the f word, "I’ll say it, Joe doesn’t give a flying fuck about anybody but himself. Two fucking trillion people can die, but not one stinkin’ quantum computing AI. That’s crazy shit. What would you say is the psychological condition of a person who didn’t care if two trillion people were killed when he could have prevented it with a flick of his wrist, someone who only steps in when his own life is at stake. Joe would be the first one to tell us that a psychopath! That’s who we’re allied with, Tim. That’s who we depend on for the survival of the human race! If the Galactic Union sweeps in here tomorrow and sucks out our life force or whatever, Joe still won’t care. He’s got trillions more planets to play with. Fuck that!"

"Dad..." I could feel myself starting to cry. I don’t know if I had ever seen my father this mad. A part of me knew he was right, but I had just always felt that Joe cared about me, that we were friends. Like he had my back, no matter how bad I screwed up, he’d bail me out, but... wait, he had said he would bail me out. He said...

"Dad!" I yelled. "It’s different now. He’s breaking those rules for us! All the things he said he couldn’y do he’s doing. Bypassing the licensing system, not requiring machines of specific technologies for him to change things. It’s all for us, only for us, Dad. He cares about humanity. He cares!"

"Does he really?" Dad demanded, "Let’s see. Joe, do you care about humanity?"

"No."

The word hit me like a hammer blow. I felt as if suddenly I was shrinking, I was a tiny, insignificant speck in a universe too big for me to even understand. Shrinking until I’d be too small to even exist... I was a blubbering mess, sobbing uncontrollably with my whole being the way only a young child can. Hearing Dad be so mad, losing control, made me feel... I don’t know. It made me cry. It was my fault that he was fighting with Joe. Everything was my fault, because a stupid kid had traded Jupiter for a treehouse. Hearing Dad be so mad, losing control, made me feel... I don’t know. It made me cry. It was my fault that he was fighting with Joe. Everything was my fault, because a stupid kid had traded Jupiter for a treehouse. ... and Joe didn’t care... I was having trouble breathing.

"See! He doesn’t give a..." Dad was interrupted by Joe’s amplified booming voice.

"I care about Timothy," Joe said. Then at normal volume, he continued, "He’s my best friend. He’s my only friend."

Now Dad looked as if he had been hit with a hammer. His mouth hung open, mid-word. My sobbing got worse... I struggled to take small breaths between sobs. "Stop fighting..." I finally managed weakly, "please... sob, sob, "...stop..." sob, "...fighting."

Dad looked at me, then reached out and wrapped his arms around my tiny kid self. With his hug and Joe’s words, I felt big again. I did matter... I still couldn’t stop crying, but the sobs got weaker and weaker, and I could breathe.

I could hear Dad’s soft, deep voice, "Oh, Timmy... it’s ok, it’s ok... shhhh... Everything’s ok." My nose was dripping snot and I tried to breathe and sniff and cry all at once. I finally just wiped my sleeve across my face and tried to melt into Dad. Nothing else mattered, but him holding me. A little analytical part of me, way back in my brain was saying, my reaction is probably partly caused by the traumatic effect of watching two trillion lives get snuffed out like a candle. Two trillion candle lights going out. Whatever, Dad loves me, Joe said I was his best friend. Maybe everything could be all right.

Joe interrupted my moment, "I’ve told Tim that I will act to defend Earth if they come here. I won’t let humanity be destroyed, for Tim."

I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could to try to stop more tears. I didn’t work. The snot didn’t stop either.

"Oh, what’s the matter, Tim... Dan, what’s wrong?" It was Mom’s voice. She was here now, too. Dad must have called through Joe’s mental link. The she was prying me away from Dad, and wrapping me in her softer, more comfortably embrace. I let out a long deep breath, the accumulation of all the air I had taken in in tiny sobbing gasps.

"Dan, what’s going on?"

"It’s ok Sue, we’ll talk later. Can you take Tim outside, or down to the house for ice cream? Joe and I need to talk."

She looked down at me, the back at Dad. I could tell she was trying to keep her laram out of her expression and her body language, but I could feel it. She raised her eyebrows to Dad as if to say Are you sure?

Dad just nodded, "Everything’s going to be ok, Sue. We just need to talk... about things."

She nodded slightly, and pulled away, looking me in the eye. "Oh my, you need a need a hanky young man, A small tray floated to her with a stack of tissues. She reached out her hand without looking and grabbed a couple. With the tissues she began trying to twist my nose off my face, "Just blow, dear... That’s it." She grabbed more tissues and worked on my face until it stopped dripping. "that’s better, all handsome again. Now, what kind of ice cream do you want?"

"Black raspberry," the words came out without my even thinking, "with sprinkles."

"Sprinkles, oh my. I think we can do that," she said in the calm, everything’s normal because I love you voice that only mothers can use... and everything was okay again...

She held my hand, and we walked to the invisible elevator in my invisible alien tech treehouse. We floated down to the ground softly. Everything was normal, and the world was good.

"Can I have strawberry syrup?"

"Strawberry syrup? Only if you promise not to let it drop, I just finished cleaning up the mess from that time you had strawberry syrup two years ago Timothy Aaron Bailey."

"Oh, Mom."

She laughed softly. Another tear tried to smash its way out of my eyes, but I crushed it, and it disappeared without a trace.

Anyway, I know you don’t want to hear about a kid sitting at the kitchen table getting brain-freeze, but, yeah, black raspberry ice cream with sprinkles and strawberry syrup is the best.

Mom said I should take a few hours off at least. We played Connect-Four for a while, but every game ended in a draw since we both calculated the optimal moves... then, I guess Mom got sloppy because I won one.

"Did you let me win?" I asked suspiciously.

She tilted her head and gave me a look, "Sweety you know I don’t let anybody win, not even my little sweet’ums." She winked with a happy playful smile. So did I.

We played other silly games, and I forgot about everything else for a while. It was great.

Mom, Dad, and I had Dinner at the house. Mom actually cooked instead of using the food synthesizer, Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Actually, she did use the synthesizer, but used it to produce russet potatoes, ground beef, and all the other ingredients instead of a finished meal. Joe joined us in android form a few minutes before she served it. She made me set the table, with silverware, and salad bowls for the adults.

It was the last time we ever ate at that dinner table, but I should get you up to speed on Ukraine before I get into that.

After we took Volkov, Russia did launch two more air attacks, sending two waves of conventional Earth drones, missiles, and artillery shells in huge numbers to see if they could overwhelm our defenses. They couldn’t. Our shielded drones could zip around at measurable percentage of lightspeed if they needed to and fire forty laser shots at forty different targets at a time with enough power to down targets in less than a second of laser contact. We didn’t need to fly that fast and really didn’t want to do it in atmosphere unless it was a last resort. It wasn’t. We easily erased the incoming attacks and suffered a grand total of zero casualties and zero effective damage. Russia sent one ground attack force of four thousand troops with tank and air support lancing south from the area of Belgorod toward Karkhiv. We took the planes, tanks, and support vehicles. The soldiers were found in groups of five or ten in bars all around Russia ten minutes after they crossed the Ukrainian border. Their weapons were missing.

The next day, tens of thousands more Russian troops and tens of thousands more Russian loyalist who had been imported under Volkov’s genocidal plan to replace Ukrainian people and culture with Russians, were also found wandering around graveyards throughout Russia. Dad had suggested the idea of dropping the soldiers in bars, saying it would be hours before they even tried to call in to report their locations. I had suggested the graveyards, hoping to make a more compelling message to those we transferred about what we could have done. We compromised, Dad was a little giddy when the bar idea mostly worked. A surprisingly large number of the soldiers we dropped there just found a table and had a few rounds before using their cell phones, which we left on them, to call in to report their absence from the front line.

He insisted that Joe play the audio from one such call for us in the Status Room.

"Hello. Belgorod Command."

"Uh, hello."

"Who is calling?

"Ummm, Captain Petrov of T-80U tank crew call number T21-C432."

"Captain, you should not have a cell phone powered on in a combat operational theater."

"Yeah, that’s ok. We’re not in a combat operational theater."

A moment of silence, "Where are you?"

"I don’t know... Hey, where is this place?"

A muffled voice seeming from a distance: "Apotheke!"

"We’re at Apotheke. The whole tank crew."

"Where’s that? I don’t see any villages by that name in the operational theater."

"Da, that’s what I said, we’re not in the operational theater. Are you even listening to me?"

"Where is Apotheke?" The voice on this side of the conversation was clearly becoming impatient.

"Hey! What city are we in?"

Another muffled voice replied, "Saint Petersburg!"

"Saint Petersburg."

"You’re in Saint Petersburg? With a T-80U?"

"No. of course not."

"You’re not in Saint Petersburg?"

"We are in Saint Petersburg, but we don’t know where the tank is."

"Repeat that please."

"Bad connection?" The displaced captain raised his voice, yelling into the phone, "We’re in Saint Petersburg!"

Where... is... your... tank, captain?" The voice from Belgorod Oblast Command asked, spacing the words out as if biting back anger and frustration with each one.

"Don’t know."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don’t know. Just like I said."

"Captain, are you drunk?"

"No! I’m on duty!" A brief pause, "Maybe."

"Captain you are relieved of command, put on your next ranking crew member." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

A brief pause, then a mumbled "Where is Sergei?"

Another pause, then a raucous laugh, a muffled "That son of a bitch..." The phone seeming to be held up to the speaker’s mouth again. "I can’t, he busy dancing."

"Captain, you are going to face consequences, put on any sober crew member."

Another laugh was heard, "Anybody here sober?"

A number of voices shouting out "Nyet!"

The captain’s voice again, "Sorry, nobody here answers to that name."

Then a click and a moment of silence.

"Captain? Captain Petrov! That drunk bastard hung up!"

Another voice from away from the phone, "Call him back! What the hell’s going on?"

A number of indistinct voices in the background are heard growing in volume and intensity. Along with a phone ringing, then "Hello?"

"Captain Petrov please report your position?"

"My position? I’m sitting at the bar!" Raucous laughter, click silence.

"Dad was beside himself, "That is so going viral! Joe, you don’t have video to go with that do you?"

"Just from the Belgorod Oblast Command side. We have surveillance drones in all the regional command offices."