Selvaria (POV)

Selvaria and Mason walked through a crowded commercial district near Sea World. They replaced their cosplay outfits with sleek business suits and snazzy overcoats in vivid colors. Though it failed at blending them into the crowd, people gave them a wide berth which was what they needed.

The two genetically enhanced bunnies are seated on Selvaria’s shoulders. They scan the crowds like children who have been taken to the zoo for the first time. All the mouth-watering food being served in the open-air restaurants grab their attention. They rub their soft furry bodies against Selvaria and use their long flexible ears to point toward a Cinnabon restaurant.

“Aren’t the carrots enough?” Selvaria asked them as she pulled out a few carrot sticks from her pocket.

The two bunnies covered their eyes with their ears to say no. Finally, Selvaria relented and bought them a few Minibons which were devoured in ten seconds. They then made puppy dog eyes to beg her for more which worked as Selvaria couldn’t stop herself from spoiling them.

“Those two are going to become fat if you keep feeding them this kind of food,” Mason commented as he bought a classic roll from Cinnabon. He takes a bite out of it, and his eyes start tearing up. He then orders another one and starts ripping into it.

“I should say the same to you.” Selvaria replied.

At that moment, the old clock tower in the center of the commercial district rang its bells to let everyone know it was 12 PM. Selvaria looked at her phone and asked it a question.

“High Command, how far is my target?” Selvaria asked the mini clone AI of High Command inhabiting her ultra smartphone.

[This city’s PETA office is 50 meters to your right]

“How many employees are there?”

[Around thirty]

“Only?”

[This is only a branch, not the main headquarters]

“Do you have some business with PETA?” Mason asked as he ate his fourth roll.

“I plan to kill them all.” Selvaria replied with a serious look on her face.

Mason was about to take another bite from his roll but froze. He thought he had misheard his boss because she wasn’t known for her sense of humor.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes!”

“Admiral… I mean Selvaria! We should be returning to Vector, not launching a terror attack.”

“I have a way to deal with them without risking any exposure. I plan to have you leave this in their smoker lounge.”

Selvaria pulled a Tic Tac box from her suit pocket and handed it over to Mason.

“I am guessing these aren’t the real stuff.”

“They have enough hard mint to do their original job, but my nanites will take over their host’s nervous system, which will then move according to my will as long as I am within a kilometer.”

Selvaria then uses her fingers to show a person walking over a ledge and falling down. Mason understood what would happen to those people and didn’t bother to ask for further details. Instead, he guided her to an alleyway and pulled out his phone.

“Your brother told me to keep you out of trouble with local law enforcement. Otherwise, it is my head that will roll.”

Mason said as he shared with Selvaria a message of concern from Rad.

“High Command has approved my plan, so this doesn’t need Rad’s attention.”

“Really?” Mason asked in shock.

[Consider this an experiment to test long-range nanite control in Earth gravity]

Mason couldn’t believe that High Command, famous for her policy of not interfering with Earth, was now casually approving a mass slaughter.

“But what crimes have those people committed to deserve death?”

“They all work for PETA, who have slaughtered billions of life forms for not being born naturally, and the extinction of species bred to be pets should qualify for this punishment.”

“I agree that what the organization did is horrible, but these people have no direct hand in killing all of them.”

Selvaria was unfazed by his argument and then shrugged her shoulders to say she didn’t care.

“Before I make them walk the plank, I will have them make videos that expose every dirty secret that will dismantle their organization from within until PETA can only be found in the history books.”

“What will you do when the law enforcement discovers the nanites in their bodies. Vector will be blamed for terrorism, which will start a war.”

“I will retrieve my Nanites before they can investigate the bodies.”

“How?”

“Physical contact is enough.”

“I was asking how you will get to their bodies… oh, so that’s why you’re carrying around a Nurse outfit.”

A day after the meeting with the Exo-Gene representative, Selvaria requested Mason get her a Nurse uniform. At the time, Mason assumed she wanted to use it for cosplay, but he found it odd when she didn’t use it in the following days.

“Have you done this before?” Mason asked a burning question that he couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Kill people with my nanites?” Selvaria asked for clarification, to which Mason nodded his head.

“I never heard of anyone on Vector with this kind of Nanite control.”

“Not even the Right hand?”

A cold chill passed along Mason’s spine. He recollected the flash learning module detailing Vector’s chaotic period. The first generation of Vector colonists formed several factions according to ethnicity or religion. They constantly fought over the precious resources on the moon and began killing each other instead of working together to survive and prosper.

The infighting threatened to destroy Vector and allow the Great Powers of Earth to exert their influence on the moon. However, High Command’s core programming did not allow her to harm the people under her care. Instead, she used a loophole to fuse her control of Nano Machines into a human to eliminate the troublemakers.

This ability to control the Nano Machines allowed the individual to fabricate advanced armaments, hyper cell regeneration, and some kind of puppet possession that involved hijacking the target’s nervous system. The Right hand became a fearsome existence because of these abilities, which saved Vector from the brink of collapse.

The module didn’t mention the identity of the right hand, but it did say that Vector slowly united after all the faction leaders were mysteriously eliminated. Then, to prevent a repeat of the chaos, almost every citizen of Vector was injected with an inferior version of the Nano Machines, letting High Command monitor and spot the deviants who caused trouble.

Apart from using the implanted nanites to spy on the citizens of Vector, they altered their host’s internal body structure to quicken their adaptation to life on the moon and space.

“Are you saying that the ‘Right Hand’ is you?”

“Used to be.”

“That can’t be true. The Right Hand was among the second generation. You are too young to be that figure.”

“The Nanomachines in my blood have halted the genes that cause my body to age.”

“They made you an Immortal?”

“I can be killed, but it will not be easy.”

Mason was stunned by this revelation. He tried to process how such a mighty figure ended up as the outcast admiral of Vector.

“If what you say is true, why did you give up that title?”

“I didn’t care about titles. My responsibility was to uplift Vector from behind the scenes.”

“I thought High Command uplifted us.”

“People found it easier to listen to an all-knowing AI. But since I created High Command, that means I uplifted Vector.”

Mason was about to tell her to stop lying, but he stopped when he heard the clone of High Command acknowledge it.

[What Selvaria says is the truth, she is my creator]

There was no way High Command would lie about such a thing. So Mason had no choice but to find out how all this fit together.

“I am having a hard time believing all this. The founders had a vision for Vector, which made them rebel against the Great Powers and establish the colonies on the moon. They are the ones who created High Command and everything we have.”

“You learned all that through the flash learning modules, right?”

“Yes… Don’t tell me you tampered with it to hide your involvement.”

“Correct. Whoever controls the edit button controls history.”

“Are you saying Vector is the work of a pseudo immortal?”

“It is naturally hard for you to believe what I tell you. You have lived your whole life under the belief that Vector was created with a grand purpose in mind by our founders. All the achievements were made by a superior artificial intelligence they created to lead humanity into the next step of our evolution, but the sad truth is that the original founders of Vector were rogue scientists who landed on the moon as refugees with just the bare minimum resources to survive. There was no plan to create a utopian society or terraform the Moon or Mars. Instead, they came to the moon to escape the new laws on Earth that rejected their science, and that was it.”

“Then when did you come into the picture?”

“My parents founded the Academy in Orion base to teach the second generation all the skills to survive on the moon. But unfortunately, they weren’t part of the factions that emerged among the first generation of scientists. They stayed neutral, which was a luxury no one could afford. So the faction leaders ordered their kids to bully me until my parents picked a side for protection. But those idiots got carried away and forced me into a chamber full of experimental nanite machines. Every other living thing exposed to them had died miserable deaths, but somehow I survived and gained the ability to control them.”

“Sounds like a superhero origin story.”

“Well, I did save Vector with those powers.”

“Fair point.”

“Are you satisfied with how I got my ability?”

“Just one last thing that is bothering me. If you have all that power over Vector, why do you let them treat you like a pariah?”

“As long as they don’t try to get in my way, I don’t care about their opinions. I have my own space fleet, mechs, soldiers, a loyal brother, and now all the animals I wished for. What more do I need?”

“Why do I get the feeling that there is something more in your arsenal.”

Selvaria smiled and nodded. Mason felt another shiver in his spine, but he didn’t try to push further into that topic and tried to find something different to talk about.

“Even with all the advancements Vector made with Ice harvesting, there isn’t enough to spare for all the sea creatures you asked for. So where do you plan to put them all?”

“Do you remember the Lagoon crater project?”

“The one that was abandoned over thirty years ago?”

“It wasn’t completely abandoned. Instead, high Command’s remote drone workers have been busy turning it into a paradise for aquatic creatures by siphoning 2 percent of Ice that our miners harvested over the decades.”

“You planned for all this that far back?”

“Perks of not aging. Time is no longer an issue in my plans.”

“Why go through all the trouble to bring animals to the moon?”

“Let’s just say I have had weird dreams involving many animals. Being around them makes me happy and makes life worth living.”

“Interesting. I wonder if I will feel the same for the creature inside my egg.”

“Your egg?”

“You haven’t used the Monster App on your phone yet?”

“What are you talking about?”