I stood up and approached the left door. The right door, I knew led to my private quarters. I’d check that out later. Right now, I wanted to see the operational parts of my new Headquarters. The first room was the Status Room. One side of the room was windows, not just ordinary windows. The glass had specialized monitors in it. It processed heat signatures from the area visible through the glass and labelled them. Right now, it showed a grey squirrel, two chipmunks, four field mice, two black-capped chickadees, a tufted titmouse, and a downy woodpecker. It also told exactly how far away each one was and had an arrow indicating its movent. The arrow pointed in the direction it was moving and the length of the arrow showed it’s speed. I accepted the query from the base asking if I wanted to accept the training mories necessary to interpret the symbology used in system monitors throughout Earth Base. This let quickly see and interpret the exact speed of each creature from the arrow sizes. The colors of each arrow indicated how close the creatures’ paths would take them to what the Earth Base System called the Inner Defense Periter, which extended 100 feet from the outer walls of the Base, from 15 feet below ground level and curving up over the top of the base in a do shape. I "knew" now that every window in the base would have this sa capability, except the windows in the Welco Hall which would require to actively will them to display this information.
I ran back out to the Welco Hall, knowing its windows faced my house through the trees. I willed it to turn on. My house lit up like a carnival. Apparently, my house was much warr than the outdoors right now. The roof glead with the rising heat from inside combined with the accumulating heat of the sunlight hitting it. I could see Mom’s outline in the kitchen. She was labelled as HUMAN: MOM in green lettering which ant she was a trusted ally. I knew that the system drew the na and status from my own brain sohow. I also beca aware that I could allow the Super-Secret Planetary Leadership Headquarters Treehouse Fortress to be accessed and partially or even totally controlled by other individuals if they were in the trusted ally category. Absolutely not! I responded to the system query. Maybe soday, but absolutely not now. I noticed we had mice in the house. It looked like they were inside the structure of the floor and walls. There were a lot of them.
Seventeen field mice currently present inside the structure. The system inford telepathically. It also made aware that I could kill them all with a thought by activating the Earth Base weapon systems. I almost did it instantly, and the system asked for secondary confirmation to engage weapons. Just thinking about getting rid of the mice had triggered weapons systems activation! I knew now that they required a second conscious authorization to fire as a safety chanism. That was good, I’d hate to blast soone by accident. I did not destroy the mice. Being the King of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space ca with a lot of power and this base had powerful weapons. I would need to use it carefully.
The station’s sensors reached 2000 feet from the station itself. A query asked if I wanted further information on extending the capabilities. Yes, please. I thought back. Range can be extended to cover any distance by deploying remote sensing units. Each would be cloaked similarly to the Super-Secret Earth Base, invisible to eyes and most electronic sensors, certainly any sensors created by current Earth technology. They would have built-in evasive maneuver capabilities and would simply move out of the way of birds or anything else that might intersect their position. Even sothing as fast as a bullet? I asked the system. Yes, anything moving through physical space up to approximately 20% of lightspeed could be avoided if it’s approach could be detected.
Whoa! That’s fast! I thought.
Yes, the system answered in my head. The station was not equipped with remote sensors, however. Neither did it have any orbital or system monitors which could be integrated to keep an eye on Earth orbit and the entire solar system, even beyond it. Interdinsional communication links ant no lag between when such remote sensors observed sothing and when I could see it here, complete with a full identification and analysis by the Earth Base system. If, of course, I had any such remote sensors, which I didn’t. I wondered if Earth Friend had deliberately left them out as a future bargaining chip, or if it was just too much his little builder robot to do in such a short period of ti. Anyway, I had already accepted Earth Base as a suitable apology so I couldn’t really ask for more at this point without giving sothing in return.
"I presu you are interfacing with the system for information about the station?" Earth Friend asked from beside . I had completely forgotten he was here!
"Um, yeah... We should use these mory implant lessons in school. It would make it so much easier," I said.
"Most Galactic Union planets do use them for teaching children," he replied. "Within the Galactic Union, however, early teaching is strictly regulated. It would be quite easy to input ideological patterning into the learning and effect so asure of control over the recipient’s belief systems This is strictly forbidden within the Galactic Union... but so of those outside our Union do use such practices. It is a serious offense to us, we... go to war with the leadership of any group that practices such control over their population."
Well, that’s interesting, I thought to myself. I’d have to learn more about these wars, and what might trigger them soon. anwhile, "Wait. By accepting these mories, I could be letting you control my thoughts?"
"In theory, yes. I assure you that as mbers of the Galactic Union, we would never do such a thing. But, for your protection, the Super-Secret Planetary Lead... um, Earth Base has... what your people might call firewalls built-in, and can even install a robust filtering system into your brain that would catch even the most sophisticated attempts to control your opinions with what we call ’shaded’ mories: mories that carry embedded emotional content or ideological dogma presented as factual data. It doesn’t translate well to your language, but the system can help you understand it telepathically. You should always use caution when accepting any filtering as it too could be used to ’shade’ your perceptions and outlook. Please use the system’s resources to teach you about this subject fully before accepting any queries for firewall installation. While inside the Earth Base, however, such implants are detected and stopped in process regardless of the source. As Supre Ruler of the entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space, however, you will be a target for hostile thought intervention... by non-mbers of the Galactic Union, and should use every ans to protect yourself, for the safety of your planet."
"What about everyone else on the planet? Could soone set up so mass thought broadcast system and hit millions of people at once, turning them into an enemy army or sothing?" I was suddenly very scared about the power that alien technology represented, it seed like the Universe was a very dangerous place.
"In practice, such mory implants must be individualized for each brain. The input you get from the system cannot be picked up by anyone except you. While the system can analyze brains and then tailor it’s ssaging for each in turn. It’s a one by one process. It is theoretically possible to use it on large populations, but it would be one person at a ti, limited by system resources, proximity, and several other factors. It can also be difficult to overco pre-existing ideological patterning which has been reinforced over ti. As you might say, once soone is set in their ways, it is difficult to get them to change. It can be done, of course, but it takes ti and a certain subtlety," Earth Friend explained.
"Hey, can I train a dog with this telepathy?" I asked, possibilities exploding in my thoughts.
Earth Friend went still. I didn’t know if I offended him, or the idea broke his rules. I waited.
"I have not considered it." He eventually said. "A less capable brain would be more easily damaged by the inputs, even as we throttle down the speed and amount of data transfer for species like yours, it could be restricted even further in theory. I think it would be possible to make transfers to any brain that holds mory, perhaps even if their mory is hard-wired without significant learning capability. It would require so research and adaptation of the technology for lesser brains... Of course, there are so ethical considerations, the issue of... you would say inford consent. Could the creatures understand what you were doing and agree to it..." he seed to drift off in thought.
"Forget I ntioned it. That’s private Earth information and giving it to your species is forbidden if you still want that refueling station. I an, maybe I could trade it for sothing else later, but let’s see how it goes." I imagined an army of tigers charging into battle ahead of human infantry... or a swarm of birds taking out jet fighters... I put those thoughts out of my head.
He looked at , startled, I think. He seed to be reassessing . "Yes, I shall consider it privileged information, but I do think we would be willing to negotiate for this idea. Different peoples often think differently, see different possibilities. Such novel ideas are valuable, and you are wise to protect them as a valuable resource for your state."
"My state? Massachusetts?" I asked and instantly felt stupid.
"I an, your people, your nation, the Earth people whom you rule." Earth Friend said. "I should be more carefully since your language has many polyses and homonyms."
"What? Never mind... Let’s get back to checking out Earth Base."
In this room there was a circle on the floor that looked like the elevator disk in the Welco Hall, but it was a different, darker shade of blue. The Earth Base system provided the answer to my query. It was an elevator to the observation tower I had requested! I ran over and stood in the disk willing it to take up. I rose up. As I passed through the ceiling, which opened in a disk shaped the sa size as the elevator disk, I could see all around as if I were outside. It went up through the tree canopy and perhaps 30 feet beyond. I was pretty high up and seemingly floating in air. There was a black outline about ten feet in diater with the elevator’s dark blue disk in the center. I "knew" that this indicated the observation platform’s outer wall. The invisibly clear walls curved up in a do overhead and had the sa sensor capability as the windows in the rest of the base. I could see everything, my house, the treetops from my backyard, Cheshire, Mount Greylock to the north. I could call up the exact distance to anything I could see. The heat sensors and identifiers had a much shorter range, but landmarks were labeled on the window as I focused on them. I knew that even though the observation tower walls were perfectly clear, I could not be seen from outside, I was completely hidden by the invisibility field. This was so much better than I had imagined it!
After about a half hour of looking around the countryside and trying a bunch of queries to see how much the window display could tell about everything I could see (it was quite a lot, by the way), I stepped back onto the elevator disk and willed myself back down to the main level. Earth Friend was waiting, just standing there doing nothing. "Sorry to keep you waiting," I said.
"It’s not a problem at all," he said dismissively. "Shall we move on to the next room?"
"Yes." I walked to the single door at the back of the Status Room.
My eyes popped wide open as the rooms purpose filtered into my mory. This was the Operations Room. From here, I could operate planetary defense system weaponry with imnse destructive power capable of defending Earth and the entire system from almost any threat. Planetary controls systems influencing weather, ocean currents, solar shading and collection fields, mining and manufacturing systems throughout the solar system, this was the control hub for an empire. I say I could do all those things, if I had such weapon systems, if I had mining installations, field generators, planetary scale manipulators, and host of other huge, highly advanced systems. I didn’t have any of that. I don’t have any of that YET, I thought to myself. I was beginning to realize just how helpless Earth and the human race were before the aweso technologies of these advanced alien races. Was giving this little taste of alien tech and the knowledge of all that we didn’t have a veiled threat? Was he really trying to show all the ways his Galactic Union could destroy Earth knowing we wouldn’t even know destruction was coming never mind having any chance of stopping it?
I was beginning to rethink the title I had given Earth Friend and the nature of the negotiations for his Jupiter refueling station. But, then again, they could just take it. If they just set up their installation around Jupiter, we wouldn’t even be able to detect it with their cloaking tech. They could even wipe Earth clean of life if we objected too loudly or asked for too much in the negotiations. Why negotiate at all? I wondered. Was it part of their ethical considerations, did they need our "inford consent," as Earth Friend put it, to live up to so moral code they followed?
My mood was much more somber as I retreated back to the Welco Hall and went through the right hand door to the areas that was my Planetary Leadership Living Quarters. With only cursory interest, I viewed the food synthesizer and other dining room features. Sohow the dining room could expand to host a feast for dozens of people as needed. My quarters had an exercise/ entertainnt chamber that reminded of the holodeck on Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, basically an empty room that with holographic projectors and telepathy could simulate almost any environnt or situation. Finally there was the sleeping quarters with low gravity suspension fields. My query about the workings of the advanced equipnt further fueled my dour mood as the system inford that it could not reveal the specific technologies of scientific advancents required to construct similar items or even fully understand how they worked. Playing the mory implants off as telepathy requiring too much background information for to understand was just part of this technology transfer prohibition.
Suddenly I realized that this wasn’t a ga. A cool new treehouse was aningless. I an it was still pretty cool, don’t get wrong, but there were larger stakes at play here. This little building was nothing to these aliens, it gave ... it gave Earth nothing. It was a trivial little throw-away gift for them. They were trading beads for Manhattan Island, like I learned in school last year. And they wouldn’t stop at Manhattan. If I wasn’t careful they’d end up owning my entire world. Maybe I should turn this whole thing over to the President, or the United Nations, or sobody, my parents at least; anybody better able to deal with all this. I was just a kid after all, an eight-year-old pretending to be King of All I Survey, but in this ga of make-believe, if I lost, the entire planet could die for real.
I knew my course of action was set. I turned to Earth Friend, "That’s all for today. Be on the elevator platform at 10:00 AM tomorrow to be admitted to Earth Base for negotiations. You are dismissed." I tried to sound kingly and commanding, but I felt like my eight-year-old voice betrayed and made sound like a petulant eight-year-old.
Earth Friend smiled at , and said "As you wish, King Tim." The smile was no different, but to it seed not like a friendly smile, but a predatory smile. I had thought I was fooling him, that he believed when I said I was King of Earth, but maybe that was part of the ga. If they could pretend they thought I was Earth’s rightful ruler, then they could claim the agreents they made were in good faith and binding. I don’t even know where all these terms were coming from, part of the information I was picking up from the mory transfers, I guessed. I needed to be more careful. Were they ’shading my perceptions’ as Earth Friend had put it? Well, there was one way to stop it for now. Earth Base, I thought to the system, no more mory transfers until further notice. Verbal communication only.
"Acknowledged," I heard they system respond aloud.
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