Olympus (Rise of the Empire Book 1)

by Ivan Kal

  “Do you think that is wise?” Nadia asked. “It is an alien computer, after all.”

  Seo-yun turned to Nadia. “Him, not it. I believe that we have won his trust. We have been treating him as a person, which I think he never experienced. From the records we read, the AIs were never treated as anything more than a tool to be used. We gave him our courtesy and time; there is almost always someone with him talking. I believe that any intelligence deserves that courtesy and has a right to live. I believe that the problems the Union had with the AIs stemmed from their utter contempt for them,” Seo-yun said, glaring at Nadia, who started to respond but was interrupted by Tomas.

  “Nadia, Seo-yun is well aware of the dangers and is taking all the precautions. We are not here to talk about the way she runs her projects,” Tomas said, and looked at Nadia until she nodded. “Good. Now, Nadia, give us an update on our schooling program.”

  Nadia took a deep breath before speaking. “Alright, well the program is performing much better than planned. The children have adapted almost instantaneously. And most are doing great in their studies. We have been changing classes and groups based on the children’s performance; those who learned slower were placed in less demanding courses, while those who excelled were pushed forward into more advanced courses. We have also adjusted many things from the original plan, but everything is finally taking shape. We are currently designing programs for more advanced kids, where we will integrate the orphaned kids with those advanced kids attending our regular school programs,” she said.

  “Do you think that their countries will try to take them back when we secede?” Seo-yun asked.

  “They will most likely try,” Tomas said. “But they won’t be able to do anything. They will try to paint us as bad guys, kidnapping kids and such, but it will not matter in the end.”

  “And will they be right? Are we kidnapping these children? Recruiting them?” Nadia asked.

  Tomas shook his head resolutely and swiped his hand. “Absolutely not. Their countries didn’t care about them. They turned them out on the street the moment they were of legal age, with no preparation for the real world. It’s even worse outside of America. It’s not that they don’t have enough money, it’s that they would rather spend it on something else. They were happy enough to let us take those kids; they were a burden on them. When they come after us for this—and have no doubt they will—we have more than enough evidence to show the world what those kids’ futures would have really looked like if it weren’t for us. And we will let the kids choose when they come of age whether they want to return to their home countries or stay with us.”

  “We will see soon enough,” Elias said.

  Others nodded silently; there was nothing else left for them to do but wait.

  Chapter Eleven

  November 2099 – Five years later

  Adrian uncrossed his legs and looked towards the office door for the hundredth time in the last five minutes. He was nervous. The meeting he was about to have would be another turning point in his life. He was now sixteen years old, and had already finished the elementary schooling provided by Olympus. He learned fast and had surpassed his classmates a long time ago; the only one who stayed with him was his best friend Sahib. They’d finished the eight-year-long schooling program in half the time. There were other kids who had finished the course earlier, but they’d already had schooling and had been close to graduating anyway. After they’d passed the final test, they had chosen the area in which they wanted to specialize.

  There were no restrictions other than that you had to pass the course entrance exam. And you could always switch afterwards if you wanted to study something else instead. Now that Adrian finished the first part of his education, he was ready to start the next. Which brought him to waiting in front of the office for the Olympus military. Adrian had chosen to join the military, though he still didn’t know whether he had been accepted. The Olympus military was different than the ones on Earth, about which they studied in History class. The Olympus military was originally a security force, and at first only members which had higher education had been accepted. Back before Olympus seceded from the Earth governments. Now, times were changing. Now, they also accepted those who went through the Olympus education system. And even after getting in, you wouldn’t be accepted in the military just like that. You again went to school—military school—where you learned subjects like politics and advanced math. They studied tactics and strategy, too, and there was some physical training.

  But that training was nothing like what came after one graduated from military school and joined the army. There were many jobs in the military, from infantry to technicians. The entrance exam differed from those to other schools as well. It was a series of test, from logic, math, and common sense to physical fitness, reflexes, problem-solving, and military puzzles. He had already taken the test two weeks ago and had gotten a message instructing him to check in at the military office on the Minos space station orbiting the Moon. Adrian had friends who had applied to the military as well, and all of them got their acceptance letters a week ago. All of them were supposed to attend the military school at Sedna on Earth, while Adrian alone was asked to come to the Moon station. Which was one of the reasons why Adrian felt very nervous. He wasn’t sure why he needed to come all the way here for a simple acceptance. Did that mean that he did something wrong? Was he to be rejected? But again, why ask him to come all the way here for a simple rejection?

  Adrian continued to stare at the door every few minutes, until finally the secretary at the desk in front of the office gestured for him to enter. Adrian took a deep breath, walked over to the door, and entered. The office was sparsely furnished; there was a single couch on the side, a small table in front of it, and a desk at the end of the room. The desk was one of the new designs; it was completely transparent, and on it and in the air above it, many files were opened—texts, images and videos, all shown as if on a screen. The hologram technology had advanced a lot, and the images were clear. The woman sitting behind the desk had short black hair and a firm expression. Adrian recognized her immediately; he saw her on the news frequently. General Laura Reiss, right hand of Elias Bakas and second-in-command of the Olympus military. She motioned for him to sit in the chair in front of her desk and looked at him steadily as if she was weighing his worth.

  “You must be wondering why you were asked to come here,” she said.

  “Yes, sir—ah, ma’am,” Adrian said, and he felt his cheeks redden. The general’s lips turned upwards for a moment in a half smile before her face assumed a stern mask again, though her eyes still had a hint of smile in them.

  “Ma’am is fine. And as to why you are here.” She brought up some kind of list and gazed at it for a minute before she sighed and turned back towards Adrian. “In normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be talking at all; you would have gotten your acceptance letter and continued on with your studies. But, the reality is that your tests were unusual.”

  “Unusual how?” Adrian asked fearfully. Did they think he had cheated?

  “You scored above any other applicant. Not just that, you managed to find solutions to some puzzles that were frankly believed to be far above your level,” she said slowly, watching him steadily.

  “I, I didn’t cheat, I swear!” Adrian said quickly.

  The general smiled softly. “No, you didn’t; we checked. After we studied your tests, we went back and went through all your records from the moment you came to Olympus. We saw that you excelled in every area you were in. You advanced ahead of your class, you advanced to the level far ahead of your age in the martial arts…and all that with relative ease. Now I want you to tell me honestly, did you really feel challenged in your studies?”

  Adrian looked down at his hands and fidgeted uncomfortably. “No, not really. It was easy. I have been slowing down on purpose,” he said softly. He had never told this to anyone before. He had figured out early on that for the rest of the kids, the studies we
re difficult, or at least challenging. And not wanting to be separated from them, he’d adjusted his responses to match their level. Only later when Sahib had started to advance ahead of the rest of the class did Adrian raise his own level to match his. He didn’t want to lose his first real friend.

  The general smiled widely now. “Yes, we thought as much. You did a really good job of hiding your intellect; you always did just enough to pass the test with a sufficient score to stay in the same class as your friend, only exceeding the score a few times so you would not raise suspicion. If you hadn’t scored as high as you did on the military tests, we wouldn’t have figured it out. Your friend, Sahib, he chose to apply to military school as well. Did you apply just because he did?” she asked.

  Adrian thought about it for a moment before answering. “I didn’t. Well, maybe at first. Sahib is my best friend. I was afraid that I would lose my first real friend. Now I know better. We will always be friends.”

  “But if you knew that, why didn’t you show your true capabilities to your teachers?”

  Adrian scratched his head. “Habit, I guess. I have been hiding my intellect and adjusting my test scores for so long it just came naturally.”

  “I want you to promise me that you will never do that again. Olympus needs minds like yours,” she said seriously.

  Adrian nodded eagerly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now there are a few other things I need to talk to you about,” she said, continuing in a serious tone. “First, the Olympus military is young. And as such, we still have a lot of things to figure out, one of which is how to keep a military in space, as most of our people and property are in space. There are also other things, like how does one operate in space? We have managed to fumble our way until now, but that needs to change, and as such we have other programs we started, one of which is about building a fleet. I want to send you there. It is a branch of the military that has been officially formed just a couple months ago. We have been selecting promising people from all the other branches of Olympus, from techs to security. People who are capable of helping to build a new branch from the ground up.”

  Adrian looked at her, bewildered. “But I don’t have the education or anything close to the expertise I need to be able to help!” he said.

  “You will learn, now that you don’t need to limit yourself. I have no doubt that you will catch up on everything you need to know. And as for expertise, the truth is that no one has the expertise. The closest thing we have to space fleet models are in science fiction books and movies. We will need to learn as we go.”

  “But why me? What would I be able to add that someone older couldn’t?”

  “The truth is that they are already tainted by their experiences. We need someone with no such background, whose imagination is not limited by past experiences,” she said. “Also, there is one other reason why we want you. First, you have already been on the list of the potential recruits for the fleet. And regardless of the area you chose to study, you would have eventually been offered a chance to transfer. Of course, if we hadn’t found out about your tests, the offer would have come much later, when you were older.”

  “Why was I on the list?” Adrian asked.

  “Years ago, before we finally started this department, we started several programs to find people who would be qualified. One of the programs we used was in the form of a game. I believe you are familiar with the one,” she said with a smile. It seemed to Adrian that the general liked to smile a lot.

  Adrian looked at her smile before it finally came to him.

  “Fleet Commander?” he asked.

  “Yes. The game was in fact a very sophisticated simulation. All ‘levels’ were designed as possible real-life problems. All the technology was real; the ships were the ones we had plans to build, some of which were scrapped after we saw how they showed themselves in the game. So you see, you already have the required knowledge for the fleet. You just didn’t know it yet.”

  Adrian thought of the information he’d just received for a minute or so. The general remained quiet as he became lost in his own thoughts. He immediately realized the importance of what he was just told. If the game was a simulation of the real fleet actions, he knew that he had all the knowledge he needed. He also knew the many faults that the game had, which meant that the real fleet had the same ones. Suddenly, it didn’t feel like he was as unqualified as he initially thought. “Alright, I will join,” Adrian said, coming to a decision.

  “Good. I must warn you that it will not be easy; you will have a lot of challenges. Most everyone will be older than you, and you will have to learn fast,” she said.

  “I know.” And he really did.

  Chapter Twelve

  December 2099

  Adrian sat on an uncomfortable medical bed. He rubbed his palms, trying to warm his cold hands. He was wearing only a medical gown, and the room he was in was a bit chilly. The room was small, about four meters across. Most of the room was filled with medical cabinets, and the rest by the bed he was sitting on. There wasn’t any medical equipment inside of the room. Adrian thought about how much he’d learned since he’d accepted the general’s offer. He was assigned to her team. General Laura Reiss was put in charge of the still forming Fleet. Well, she wasn’t a general anymore.

  One of the jobs they had was to form a whole new organization, along with a new ranking names and structure. Their team was based on the station orbiting Mars. The station itself was a secret; only those with high-level clearance knew about it, because Tomas Klein didn’t want to antagonize the governments of Earth any more than necessary by letting them know that they already had a presence on Mars. The relations between Olympus and Earth had been deteriorating for years, ever since they found out that Tomas pulled a fast one on them and started colonizing and mining the Moon before them. And to add the fuel to the fire, Tomas strongly refused to sell any of Olympus’s technologies, which Earth wanted badly—especially the Coalition, since they were the ones with the biggest technological gap between Olympus and them.

  Since Olympus’s secession, most of the other countries had started mining helium or colonizing the Moon. Even the South American countries had managed to come to a deal where they worked together to mine the Moon. But the truth was that all of them still fell behind Olympus technologically; the League and Concordis were closest, but even they were a long way from matching Olympus technology. Even though Olympus was now officially a country, they still operated as a company. There wasn’t yet a name for their structure, but it worked. And it constantly evolved; their laws were simple and short, and they had many characteristics of different forms of government. They were “ruled” by Tomas Klein, and there wasn’t any animosity towards him. All had the choice of joining Olympus or going back to their previous countries. Most all chose to stay; they trusted Tomas. He was always fair to all his employees, and everyone had much better lives than the people on Earth.

  They had the choice to do whatever they wanted; if someone wanted to go to school and study, he could with no obligation to pay anything to Olympus other than a promise that he would use the knowledge for Olympus. There was also no monetary system in Olympus, which had seemed very strange to Adrian when it had been implemented. Instead, everything from food to a place to live was provided to people free of charge. Instead of money, people earned points, which they could then exchange for commodities. Even though they had everything they needed to live provided to them, if one wanted something extra, they exchanged their points and the thing they wanted was delivered to them.

  Adrian had always wondered how this system worked until he gained enough clearance. Now he had the clearance equivalent of a tier 5 employee, and had since learned that Olympus had fabricator technology. They could literally fabricate anything they wanted, and the points people exchanged were in fact for the fabricator time. Adrian theorized that in the future, when the technology became public, there wouldn’t even be a need for the points, as everyone would ha
ve their own fabricator. For now, though, they kept it hidden to minimize the chance of the technology falling into Earth’s hands.

  Adrian came back from his thoughts when the door opened and a woman in a white coat walked inside. Doctor Mayer was in charge of the medical staff here at the station. Adrian knew that she was very busy and wondered why she was here. He had gone through a series of tests that had taken more than six hours to complete. He was there on Laura Reiss’s orders, though when he had asked for the reason for the tests, she’d told him only to wait and see. The doctor took a chair from the corner and carried it to his bed, then sat down and looked at him.

  “Hello, young man, I see that you passed all of the required tests. This is a bit of an unusual request, but I guess if Laura wants to try, we might as well. Do you understand the risks?” She said.

  Adrian looked at her, bewildered; she didn’t make any sense to him. “Risks? I don’t understand, I thought that these were just regular medical tests.”

  Doctor Mayer opened her mouth in surprise. Then swiftly closed it, her eyes narrowed. “She didn’t tell you?” she asked, and then before Adrian had a chance to respond, she continued, “Of course she didn’t, she probably told you that it was just a checkup.” She shook her head in a disapproving manner.