They had found almost everything about us… and it is bad.

Have you any idea how it feels to drop the ball, to screw up, letting everybody down. There are a few of you that know exactly what I mean… it sucks, doesn’t it?

Dr. Nikolov was a bad egg, I knew that from the moment he started causing trouble with the scientific community on the island, and that is why I meticulously checked every single piece of communication he did. I assigned one MI to monitor him constantly, but who would have known that all that effort would be in vain because he wrote a damned letter. Yeah, the old archaic snail-mail, pen on the paper letter. (Who does that in this date and age?) Not that I have anything against it, but it irked me to a great extent to be bested by that rat so easily.

The guy who mailed it for the doctor was one of our people who had gone on an ordinary supply run. That double-crossing weasel told him it was for his sister, and she didn’t use computers or modern phones. (As if—the creep was an only child.)

So… now we are up a manure creek without a paddle, and the water is sloshing inside the boat.

I managed to reconstruct the entire chain of events (after the fact that is).

It all started when one enterprising clerk in the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, received the letter sent to the head of the ministry and realized what he had in his hands. After some additional digging, I found he was, in fact, a CIA spy by the name of Alex Peters, who did not feel so patriotic when he found out what was in his possession. He went the full capitalist route and sold it to… everyone. Americans, Russians, Chinese…

The man organized a blind auction and managed to sell the same intel to every single intelligence agency that was interested. By the end of the day, he was about $20 million richer and happy as a clam at high tide. Well, I left twenty in his account… that is twenty dollars; to show that I don’t really hold a grudge. He has a good job as a clerk, but I hope his liver can withstand all that vodka he is pickling it in.

Once the genie was out of the bottle, there was no stuffing it back in, not that I did not try, but the exercise proved to be futile. The damage was done, and now we needed to face the consequences. Even with all this processing power, almost divine view of everything within this digital world, I still failed at seeing this dangerous situation. There is that old saying of not seeing the forest for the trees. I was so concentrated on several projects that I didn't see the SOB plotting against us.

Soon after that, we had several ships approaching, and by the communications I intercepted, they were up to no good.

The first was, of course, a US ship, with the orders to put us all into custody; the other ships had a variation on the theme. It is interesting how despite national and cultural differences, the basic human nature is to react the same under certain circumstances. It is a mindset of conquerors, to take from others what they couldn’t create. I wonder what would Buddhist monks do if they had an army and a navy, but then again, it would kind of go against their view of the world.

By my calculations, we needed another day after the first ship arrived before we could launch into space, and that was if everybody was giving their 105% to help with the engine assembly. (Yes, I know it was 5 % above possible, but why let logic get in the way of my plans, which can be kind of strange coming from an AI. Why do you think I never allowed any of the shrinks on the island to psychoanalyze me, and believe me—they tried.)

As a consequence, all nonessential work on the ship was left half done, our main objective was to finish the drives as soon as possible.

The people on the island were concerned about what was to happen, which was normal, considering what we were up against. To keep everyone informed, we started sending daily emails sometime before, about happenings that would be of interest to them. Think of it as a newspaper, although in a much shorter form. No advertising and sensationalistic stories about inconsequential things, just useful information they could use.

Everyone was doing something during that time, be it transporting some scrap materials to the nano-factories, or moving finished parts to the place they were needed. I still had my robotic drones to do all the heavy lifting, but their help expedited the process considerably.

Through my cameras, I saw the faces of people, studied their expressions, and listened to their conversations. There was this feeling of purpose in them, unity, and realization that they were building something greater than they were. The ship, and everything else here, were just material things, but how can one put a price on those intangible links that connected so many people from various backgrounds into a close-knit community.

I think that was one of the biggest problems of the modern world, the overall sense of belonging to something greater was diluted. It still remained within smaller groups, but now they were more like separated tribes, divided by location, and ideologies. That sense of unity, which lived in former generations… is mostly gone.

The engines to lift my behemoth of a spaceship were equally enormous, and there was no way around it than to finish all of them. I thought of every other scenario that we could use as a shortcut. Including placing all the transporters underneath to give us a piggyback ride, it simply would not work; they all would be like a bunch of flies trying to carry a dog. I wanted it to be a true City-ship, so I may have gone a bit over the top with its size… maybe.

Dr. Nikolov got a one-way ticket to one of the most remote Indonesian villages on Earth, and he was unceremoniously dumped there. It would take him a while to return back to civilization, they didn't have electricity there, let alone phones. He was not evil, simply an idiot when it came to applying his intelligence to real-life events. He saw what he wanted to see, and disregarded the reality of the world. I made sure to strip him of all improvements we made to his body, no more medical nanites to make him healthy, now he will have to go the old-fashioned route.

The plan Michael made to bullshit the ship's Captain on a grand scale (and to buy us twenty-four hours), was a sound one. We even created psychological profiles of the captains that commanded the approaching ships. Psychological warfare can be a powerful tool if you know your opponent’s weak spots, and it was not that hard to compose the CVs of their lives, using everything I could search online. From high school records, personal emails, browsing histories to their military records. Those shrinks sure came in handy when the time came to decide which buttons to push.

We prepared as much as we could before the show was about to start, and even I prayed that it would be enough. Painting transporters with the flag design and colors of the ship’s nations was a great idea; it is harder to show animosity to something so familiar.

Michael was perfect in his conversation with Commander J. Brown, who was commanding the destroyer USS Nick Rigolio, and it was a happy coincidence we ended up with him. If he was some ambitious younger man, things could have turned in a completely different direction. This captain was very cautious, afraid to do the wrong thing and mess up the end of his career. The Russian captain that came later was no different; he was more into posturing, though terrified to make a big mistake that would have cost him his rank and maybe even his freedom. The Russians were far more unforgiving to blunders on an international scale. And he knew what would have awaited him back home if he messed up.

To ensure they could not receive new orders I jammed their communications, making it look like they had bad connections.

The first trouble started when the Russians decided to send a commando unit to the island. Their mission was to make a detailed reconnaissance and see how things were on the island, as if they couldn't trust our words. (What is this world coming to if one's word is not to be trusted anymore?)

Well, they were tranquilized and sent packing, it takes much more than a few big guys full of steroids to rival the things I made.

Still, that put our entire schedule in jeopardy, and we needed to pull something a bit more drastic. As things stood at that moment, we would have never gotten the time we needed. Everything would have been decided long before our preparations were finished.

The media campaign was an ad-hoc idea Anna came up with. It was all geared toward painting us as an innocent altruistic scientific mission and the military as an aggressor that wanted to take advantage of us under orders of their greedy superiors.

It should have been impossible to do it on such short notice, but not so impossible if you are crazy enough to throw money by the buckets. That stunt cost more than I like to think about. Radio, TV, Internet… they had no problem with playing our clips if we were willing to pay double their going rates, and we did. Every media outlet in the world was broadcasting our message; if things were not so dire, I would have been proud of our achievement. It created a fertile ground for the second part of the plan. Yet, even that had to be moved ahead of schedule; The American ship was getting the orders to attack us before we were ready to lift off. The TV interview needed to be rushed.

It went great, and I made sure that it was shown around the world; I had all satellites under my control, and undersea cables were long ago spliced to give me full access. Call it what you like, but I had truly hacked the planet. (That guy in the movie was right, it felt godlike for a moment to make the entire world watch just one program.)

Michael had shown the side of him no one knew he had, to bullshit so convincingly that I would have bought it… if I didn't know the whole truth. As soon as he finished his speech, the world went crazy. Only those who were sleeping were silent, but the ones who watched it reacted. Well, not all of them, there are many people who do not care one way or the other. Nevertheless, if you look at the percentages, I could still say with great conviction that more people reacted than any other time in history.

Our original plan was to have the interview, make a heartfelt invitation for a video peace conference, and then high tail into space before it started. Michael could have a far better position for negotiating anything he wanted from orbit, but it was not meant to be. I guess our little plan worked better than I predicted, so he needed to have a heart-to-heart conversation with some of the most powerful people in the world.

I can't even imagine how he felt, this was as big as it gets, and the people on those screens controlled most of the world’s military power. With enough weapons to turn the entire planet into a dead dust ball, several times over. What’s more, Michael didn't have any experience in Realpolitik at such a level. Yet, I saw the change in him in recent times, even if he did not notice it himself.

Gone was that slightly overweight man with a limp that was dishearteningly coasting into his middle-age years. Even his bearing had considerably changed; he was now standing straighter, ready to face the world head-on. His new outlook on life was not the blind faith of youth that sometimes displays that particular characteristic; this was firm confidence of a man who knew how to face his problems and to subdue them by the strength of his will.

He did great with those heads of states (in my opinion). They were all so full of hot air it was surprising gravity still had any effect on them. I get it, they were elected to represent entire nations, but most of them were convinced that made them better than regular people, and they sure all acted that way. He played them like a fiddle, told them exactly what they needed to hear, and gave enough incentive for them to agree to work together.

Come on, you greedy bastards, who gave you the right to demand anything? You didn't work for it—you cannot claim any right to it. Only because you have the backing of your armies are you even part of this discussion. Think about it, they wanted something for nothing, which is not right no matter how you spin it.

My grandpa used to say, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” And he was a wise man. During all that time, the work on the ship's engines didn't stop, and some corners had to be cut. It will fly, but forget about inertial dampeners, this baby is not going to break any speed records, or else the passengers would be turned into pancakes. The 1G gravity plates provided will have to do. Another thing my grandpa was fond of saying: “Need must when the devil drives.”

Most of the spaceship and even a greater part of the engineering level (where the engines reside), were built in the same architectural style as the Excalibur itself. It has a certain elegance, or beauty, where lines flow naturally or maybe organically is a better world. Everything that was done in this mad rush is a bit different, or simply—ugly. It looked like shoddy work, something that is not designed for beauty, purely for function. I understand, it needed to be done as soon as possible, but damn… it was a sore sight. Once we have more time, I plan to redo everything to be up to specs, but that will be done by nanites, on-site. For now, the only important thing was to get off the ground.

***

My pet peeve about politicians is their overbearing notion that they know best, they are the decision-makers so (naturally) everybody should listen to them. (I am speaking in general; I am sure there are some good ones there, but it is easier to find a virgin in a whorehouse than to stumble upon that rare animal.)

It is no wonder that they argue so much against one another, they all think that they know what is right, and the other one is in the wrong. That is the cause of so many wars and conflicts that it boggles the mind. We are a funny and self-harming species (it is a miracle we managed to survive for this long). Maybe evolution knows what it’s doing, I certainly see no logic in their overall actions.

The little talk Michael had with acting President Philip Cain before the conference was to resume, just proved my point. I didn't like him from the start and his attitude and behavior when he spoke to Michael affirmed that; the man was unscrupulous. If one took into consideration all the things President Garner said about him before he fell ill, he sure looked like a villain. And God knows there are plenty of them in Washington. I wish we had more time for me to dig deeper into the whole matter, but my priorities right now were more about saving our own asses out of this mess we fell into.

Still, that was almost a direct threat he delivered at the end. He basically told us that it will be his way or a highway, and Michael saying that he needed time to think about it, didn't go well with the man.

We sure got his response a few minutes after the conference started, and I knew it was his doing before we received any confirmation. It was in his eyes… that look of satisfaction and domination. Combined with a slight smirk he had the whole time and that evil grin at the end.

All our attempts to buy more time had failed; my sensors detected a guided missile heading our way.

That was it—the jig was up.