“What the hell was that?” I muttered to Carter.

We were leaving the UN building in New York. It had to be expanded twice as the UN became the main governing body of the Unified World Government. It had to be expanded a third time when nations from outside Earth started basically surrendering themselves into earth’s governance.

It might seem strange that any sovereign nation would do something like that, but I’ll remind you that this universe wasn’t called the Terminus-Earth universe because it was the planet I was standing on. Earth was the key-world for this universe, the all-important core for everything happening in the world. No smart nation isolates itself from the core of its greater world. Not unless they want to be locked out of the big decisions and key happenings that might affect their own nation’s future.

Honestly, if there was one good effect from the ENE it was that Earth ended up becoming strong enough to keep some of those bigger nations that came to bend knee from trying to conquer earth. Which I’m sure they were all sorely tempted to do, once it was clear that the events happening to their own neck of the woods were likely due to what happened to earth during the ENE.

I imagine that the first contact between Earth and the alien races, post-ENE, was frightfully awkward. Remember all those lies that were taught to you in school about how all those nice imperialistic trade fleets were just sailing around to make “friends”. Imagine if one of those fleets actually ran into someone they couldn’t just railroad or undermine.

Anyway, for the sake of fairness, the actual building would move around teleporting from to major cities within the larger, safer, member nations, every few years or so. The only exception was for those member nations that were off-world. Which was very much a power move, for the sake of emphasizing the Earth’s importance. It was also one of the few not nice things that I’d ever seen Carter do.

Right now it was America’s turn again. Thus UN Headquarters were currently located in New York.

“Hey, you saw that right?” said I. Trying to get Carter’s attention because he was busy conferring and flirting with his ever-present immortal girl, Meredith.

“Saw what?” said Carter. Eventually looking over at me, after giving Meredith a quick peck that my bored married ass squeeing for joy because even if we weren’t exactly pals with Meredith, me and my wives, very much shipped the Meredith-Carter pairing.

“Those weird looks I was getting from a fair number of the representatives,” I said.

“Oh, those…” said Carter. Frowning.

“Yeah, those,” I said.

“Well, does it really need to be said?” said Carter.

“Does ‘what’ need to be said?” I said.

“They’re scared of you, man,” said Carter.

“What?! Who? Me?!” said I. Befuddled because it was five in the afternoon and I’d just spent the last three hours watching a bunch of the most boring men and women in the world talk their way in circles until eventually everyone was confused about what was being agreed on or disagreed on.

“Monty, a little under a year ago, you wiped out an entire interstellar nation that held control of dozens of star systems. You destroyed all their worlds. Then you proceeded to erase all memory and record of those people...Effectively killing off their culture in a way that frankly shouldn’t be possible…” said Carter.

“Ah...That,” I said. Scratching my chin because even I hadn’t exactly forgotten what had happened, life had proceeded to move on with enough speed and force that it no longer stayed in the forefront of my mind.

“Also, people keep dying...Like a lot of people have been dying. They either drop dead or they disappear. The member nations of the world government actually kind of wanted me to ask you about that,” said Carter. Not bothering to mention that they’d actually wanted Carter to get me to stop.

“People? Which people? These mortals die all damned time, are they blaming me for the fact they’re mortal now?” I grumped, earning myself a bit of bad eye from Meredith.

“Well, it’s kind of sketchy when it’s only your enemies that are ending up dead, or ‘missing’...” said Carter. Using obvious air-quotes, with both hands.

“Ah, right...That. Well, I suppose they’ll get over it eventually,” I said. Shrugging. My experience with the now thoroughly non-existent Silpant Republic’s attempted kidnapping of Flannery had made me a lot more, harder of heart, than I’d been several months ago. I didn’t mind being feared a little, if it kept my family safe.

Carter sighed. Clearly knowing me enough to know I was not going to budge.

“Can you at least promise me you’re only wiping out the ones who are doing things?”

I sniffed.

“Of course...How else would I be able to look your nieces and nephews in the eye when I try to teach them about right and wrong? There has to be a line somewhere...right?” I said. A little offended, because even if I wasn’t a scout, I wasn’t some complete villain either. Regardless of my newly re-awakened omnicidal tendencies.

Carter’s look brightened and he proffered a fist for me to reluctantly bump with my own fist.

“I should have known...My little sis likes bad boys, not bastards...Anyway, I know a decent bagel place on this street that makes fairly excellent coffee. Want to come with?” said Carter.

I turned my attention inwards to check the time and then shook my head.

“Nah, I’ve got a school thing to go. My brats are getting older and though we’ve mostly been keeping them at home and having the bots tutor them, me and the madames, have decided that we should probably send them to a proper school before they end up all weird,” said I.

“Hey, I was homeschooled for quite a bit!” said Carter.

“I know! Not coincidentally, your name came up quite a bit when we were making this decision,” I said. Laughing as I teleported away.

*************************************************************************************************************

Henrietta and I were walking down the halls of a certain school, next to a familiar face. Principal Short of Prospero’s esteemed Watts Academy, was giving me the rundown of everything that had happened since Mint and Filomena had graduated to head off to college.

“Well, Mr. Kaylan. Mint and Filomena were and are excellent students. If you other children are even a fraction as intelligent and well-behaved, it would be a pleasure to assist you with their education,” said Principal Short.

Ever go shopping and end up being the first thing you picked up? Ever have this happen, after spending hours trying on various alternative options and shopping around to see if there was anything better.

Choosing a good school for your kid is hard. I don’t know why it wasn’t this hard when I was choosing a school for Mint and Filomena. Maybe it was because as much as I considered them my daughters now, they’d mostly been little buds at first. One was my former dog, the other was my piano. It was only later as their humanoid forms became central to who and what they were that I started treating them more like kids.

Thus their education had been more of an experiment than a necessity because back then, I’d figured if worse came to worst I could just use the library to quickly install all the needed knowledge in their minds, and then tutor them myself. After all, they already knew most of what the school had to teach, and were only attending school to gain proper socialization.

A lackadaisical view that could only exist when you weren’t worried about creating an idiot or a psychopath.

It was different with the other kids. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because these lot were the fruit of my loins, instead of young creatures that gradually began to grow on me. Little copies of myself and my wives who’d eventually take our place in the world because that’s what children are. The next shift in the never-ending task that was populating the cosmos and making things happen within it. From the very beginning, there was a very potent desire to do right by them and NOT fuck up their futures.

Me, Margot, Maci, Prim, and Henrietta spent a lot of time shopping around for good schools but good schools were hard to find.

Naturally, we started by filtering out any schools with any scandals, or scandals in waiting. You’d be surprised about how many quiet calls I ended up having to make to get administrators and teachers who were either abusing their position, and/or their students, fired.

Honestly, the number of creeper teachers was enough to make me almost ready to give up on the concept of sending my kids to school and just repurposing some FC-Units as tutors and teacher-bots. The only reason I didn’t was that I wanted my kids to have a normal education, and also Maci said that was steadily becoming a little too much of a go-to move for me.

According to her my thought process was steadily getting simplified down to: Is there a problem? Check if there’s an FC-Unit model for that. If not, build an FC-Unit model for that particular problem. I personally didn’t see any issue with relying on my artificial race of hyper-competent machine-people, but I trusted Maci’s opinion enough to take the warning seriously.

Anyway, we'd been school shopping for a while. We paused the school hunt for a few months while waiting for things to quiet down after the incident with a certain interstellar-nation that no longer exists. Then we resumed the school hunt again, after I was sure that no one was going to do something stupid, and I’d made sure that I had enough counter-measures in place that even if they did do something stupid, their act of literal and social suicide would have no effect on my family.

After weeding out the schools that were ticking time bombs of scandal, or had people who might approach our kids with ill-intent, then we were able to get down to the brass tacks of finding which schools would be a good fit for our kids.

At first, we were just going to throw money at the problem and just go with the most expensive school but you’d be surprised how big a crossover that particular slice of the educational pool had with the scandal-waiting-to-happen segment.

Also, I was kind of adamant about not raising any arrogant young masters and/or mistresses and a lot of those schools had policies that didn’t seem like they’d help out with my goal of not raising any shitheads.

I didn’t want a school that would treat my brats like they weren’t brats and end up giving them a big head about themselves. Nor did I want to send my kids to a crappy new-age school, where they wouldn’t learn anything.

At the same time, I also didn’t want to send the kids to a school that was too militant because I love my kids and I wanted them to have at least a little fun in school.

Eventually, after visiting a whole bunch of schools we ended up back here, in Prospero, and based on what I’m seeing, my kids were going to have a blast. The school had expanded by quite a bit since Mint and Filomena had been here and now taught students starting with the Preschool level. If that sounds damn convenient, it’s because I’m eighty to ninety percent sure this old woman beside me guessed I’d be having more kids one day and wanted to be able to scoop them up before some other schools did, and you know what, that’s okay. I didn’t want my kids getting their asses kissed, but in my case, the deal was the same with my face, so long as it was just the cheek, a peck or two was fine.