Throughout the night, a steady procession of large trucks roll into the square. The black ones spill out heavily armoured and armed troops - the army has arrived! The white ones spill out journalists and camera crews. They all set up different bits of gear. The army even pitches a few tents. Clearly something major is about to happen.

Just around dawn, a company of tanks rumble into the square and move into position. The guns point at me, the cameras point at me, a couple of army guys point their binoculars at me. All the tv channels take a break to cut to their news crews broadcasting from where I am, Liberation Square. On one of the channels, a military geek gets really excited about tank armaments.

I stand up and crack my knuckles. Over night as I boned up on the language and absorbed as much of the local context as I could from endless terrible late night ads, way too many music videos of uniformed choirs singing and even worse propaganda films, the shadow of an ability had started to emerge from the depths of my mind. It was like feeling returning to a numb limb.

A military commander puffs his chest out, strikes a pose in front of the cameras, slowly raises his hand to build suspense and then brings it down in a chop while shouting into a handheld radio a flunky is conveniently holding up. The tanks all fire at the same time.

I stop the shells in mid-air.

-ding-

>User Parameter discovered: [Supreme Telekinesis]

You can move things with your mind! One thing! Many things! Large thing! Tiny thing! Whole thing! Part thing! Live thing! Dead thing! If you feel it, you can move it, move it!

>: Dominus, you are using the basic command-line text interface. Initialise avatar? [y/N]

:_

The one thing to remember about telekineis is that conservation of momentum applies. Basically, if you telekinetically stop an object, say an armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot moving towards you at very high speeds, as far as the laws of physics are concerned it’s pretty much the same as if you’re stopping it with your body. Hence, the first thing telekinetics learn is not to do anything with their mind that they can’t do physically. As a corollary, it’s safer to deflect than to halt.

None of this matters to me of course.

I inspect the twelve shells suspended in mid-flight. I had stopped them without thinking much as a trained juggler would catch a ball thrown at them. With a thought, I bring them together and crumple them into a tight ball. A few of them have an explosive payload and a couple more have shrapnel added on for extra fun. All of these detonate within their casings as I crush them together - there are no gaps in my control of each shell. I release the mixed media sculpture before further compression destabilises it in normal gravity. The thing drops on the ground, cracking the flagstones on impact.

At the same time, I am applying even pressure along the tanks’ primary guns and making solid metal cylinders.

All of this takes a second.

I really like crushing things. It is pure and satisfying to turn complex physical objects into simple geometric 3D shapes - a cube, a cylinder, a sphere. The sphere with its single geometric face is my favourite shape.

A memory floats up from my damaged mind: a voice intones “simplex sigillum veri”. I a heraldic crest, a crossed pair of hammers, with the phrase emblazoned beneath. An ocean of blood washes over it.

Hmm. So not every personal memory is gone then. Maybe it’s more a case of being locked away.

From my vantage point on top of the pedestal, the most obvious read of the soldiers mood is that the crushing of their big guns has simultaneously scared, depressed and angered them.

A safe distance away behind the cordon and the rows of police cars, army trucks and armed personnel, their leaders are conferring: a policeman with a neat goatee wearing a tall shiny peaked hat and a soldier with a well maintained beard wearing an even taller and shinier peaked hat plus a bunch of medals on his coat. The earlier tank commander had slunk off.

The police chief is yelling and gesticulating. The army officer listens silently while stroking his beard like it is a cat. The contempt on his face grows until he spits out a few choice phrases, clicks his heels and spins around, yelling commands at various soldiers who immediately scramble. The police chief’s shoulders slump and he rubs his face.

I feel you, bud.

The soldiers spurred on by a series of commands down the chain quickly organise themselves into ten man squads, each one bearing a mix of automatic rifles, anti-tank weaponry and mortars. Sixteen squads stream out from the barricades, each mortal’s features set in grim lines, determined to fight and if necessary die.

It’s very stirring and manly until I telekinetically snap their bones - the left tibia and fibula specifically - one squad at a time.

Within a few seconds, the square fills with screams of astonished pain. It is utter chaos. Mortals are rolling around on the ground clutching their left limb. Some manage to keep upright, hopping clumsily up and down on their right foot. Some are crying. Their commander stares in shock, his mouth almost comically open. At least until I break his left leg. For good measure, I break his other leg too. It seems only fair.

He screams with the best of them.

Tactics 101 - a wounded soldier is far costlier to the enemy than a dead one. Also, I get to keep my score low.

The military had arrived with a good contingent of medics and the injured soldiers are soon evacuated. I feel a bit remorseful witnessing the concern and gentle care the medics show as they help these young mortals, little more than kittens really if you think about it.

What sort of person hurts kittens?

-ding-

A holo-frame opens.

“Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha,” the old monk chants from within, ““The Buddha says, ‘All men make mistakes, but only the wise ones learn from them.’”

He steels himself and then opens his eyes. Surprise passes through them.

“Oh, you haven’t killed anyone, I was dreading a genocide” he says in great relief, “That is most excellent, Dominus! To regret an injury no matter how incapacitating and petty is real progress. Keep up the good work!”

The monk brings out his brass bowl and is about to strike it when I stop him.

“Hold on,” I say, “you know what I have done in the past.”

“Of course, Dominus. How would I be a good spiritual friend if I did not?”

“You were there for my previous self?”

“It was my honour, Dominus.”

A sudden horrifying thought occurs to me. The monk had said my previous self had installed him but not which one.

“How many? How many of me have you spouted your nonsense at?”

“Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha, the cycle of death and rebirth is infinite and full of suffering.”

The monk bows. The holo-frame vanishes.

I rub my face. I didn’t even get the three chimes he was in that much of a hurry to go. If he wasnt a Buddhist monk, I’d have thought the suffering he was referring to was his own. Nope, he was totally saying that. Typical passive aggressive Buddhist crap. And they wonder why everyone in the multiverse hates them.

I look back to the square and spot the police chief.

He has been watching the medics clear the square in bemusement. In the space of ten minutes, he had witnessed two military companies, infantry and tank, defeated with no fatalities. By chance, he looks up in my direction. I wave at him. He visibly cowers. I cup my hands around my mouth and yell.

“Kindly take me to your leader!”

The man breathes in deeply and straightens up. With the air of a mortal facing his doom, he adjusts his hat, straightens his uniform and marches towards the center of the square, towards me. His assistant, a young woman, cries out in alarm and pulls at his arm. He gently removes her hand and continues.

I shift the holo-panels that are still broadcasting various channels to circle around to one side and turn their volume low. The five video channels are now all live broadcasting from the square and there are various angles of the police chief approaching.

Commentators vary from incredulity to admiration. One, Jana Jacobs a brunette female and hence an oddity in this bottle blonde habitat, is broadcasting on location. I can see the square in the background. She is expressing frustration at not being able to hear what the conversation will be.

I look out over the square and spot her and her crew, a cameraman and a sound gal. Their equipment is connected up to their van a few meters away. I move the whole lot to me. She maintains her composure remarkably well throughout and stumbles only slightly when I deposit her on the ground.

I step off the pedestal and land gently a respectful distance away.

The mortal is pale and shaking slightly, her knuckles white around her microphone.

“Sorry Jana,” I say, “I’m not going to hurt you or your crew.”

She gathers herself.

“Thank you,” she replies gathering herself then checking her crew. She inspects them closer, “Will you release my people, please.”

“They aren’t as steady as you. I think the guy has fainted.”

The female clasps each on a shoulder.

“Tom, Linda, I promise you we will get through this. I will get us all out just I did when we were in Kerander Rose.”

“We scaled the endless stairs and reached the formless shore,” one whispers.

“We got footage of the Final Fleet,” the other says.

“Damn right we did, and we got an Honour, from the goddam Premier himself, ” Jana replies, forcing a grin before turning to me, “You can let them go now, they will be ok.”

The two mortals in my grasp tremble like hatchlings but they are no longer limp. When I release them, the sound girl wobbles but the older female catches her.

“So, Mister,” she says, her eyes flashing, “will you agree to an exclusive arrangement?”

“Call me Dominus.”

“Is that your title, or your name?” Jana asks, “Dominus.”

“My title. It’s close to ‘Master’ in your language although Great Grand Master is probably closer but that just sounds wrong.”

Jana’s face twists in discomfort.

“Getting people to call you Master isn’t going to play well, Dominus.”

“And why is that?”

She takes a deep breath.

“Because, Dominus, that is how the people here with your skin colour address the people here my skin colour.”

I consider the new information. A fascist, racist, slavery based, capitalist system.

-ding-

>Side Quest: End Slavery! (In the Greater Republic of Liasval)

>There’s no simpler and more intuitive definition of evil than slavery, am i right? Never mind that it’s the mainstay of many mortal economic systems and something a certain someone very familiar to you did to entire galaxies at a time for the lols. Anyway, you’re a hero now and heroes don’t enslave mortals, they free them! There’s no simpler and more intuitive definition of good than freedom, am i right?

>Difficulty: Simple and intuitive

>Quest giver: You

>Reward: Surely doing this is a reward in itself

I sigh at the cheap cynicism, flick the holo-panel away and look back at Jana.

“Well, that just means I am going to insist everyone does exactly that. As for exclusivity, it will depend.”

“Depend on what?” Jana replies, then bows her head briefly again, “Master.”

“How you deal with that.”

I point behind her.