EMPIRE: Renewal

by Richard F. Weyand

  He was shocked to see the Palace customs Ardmore had so meticulously researched. Everyone other than assigned staff was on a first-name basis in the Imperial Residence. He couldn’t imagine calling Trajan the Great ‘Bobby,’ for instance. And the Co-Consul and his wife had the Emperor and his wife for brunch every Sunday morning.

  Claire would be more nervous than a pregnant cat. At least the first time.

  He also read about the Emperor’s use of the Imperial Guard to give their selected Heirs on-the-job experience. All their Heirs had had military experience through Augustus the Great. It was only beginning with Augustus II that an Emperor had not had military experience, and none since had. But the Four Good Emperors had all had military experience, all of them had been called to the Imperial Guard, and they stood watch during the Emperor’s most important meetings

  Wait a minute. He re-read that section again. All of them had been officers, and Ardmore noted how rare it was for an Imperial Guard officer, after his initial training, to stand watch. But one of the Guardsmen standing watch this afternoon in the Emperor’s office had been an officer. A captain, if he read the insignia right. Was she the Heir to the Throne? She looked very young.

  Then again, all of the Four Good Emperors had been young when they ascended to the Throne. None over forty. And none since had been less than seventy.

  He read on into the evening, pausing only for dinner and coffee out on the balcony with Claire.

  The next morning, Diener went into the Co-Consul’s office on the Co-Consul’s floor of the Imperial Palace. Housekeeping had moved his things in here, too, the little desk ornaments and the pictures on the credenza that made an office look occupied.

  This office, though, was much larger, made for entertaining, with a seating group off to one side in addition to the guest chairs before the desk.

  When he checked his messages in VR, he found an invitation to have lunch with the Emperor in his dining room in the Imperial Residence. He accepted, of course, and set back to reading Ardmore’s book. His secretary, a holdover from Mr. Norton, he put off until after lunch.

  As it approached noon, Diener dropped out of his VR reading of the book and headed back upstairs. This time in the elevator lobby, he turned to the right. An Imperial Guardsman on watch opened the primary door of the double doors. Diener walked through and saw another Guardsman in the hall outside what must be, if the floor plan was the reverse of his own, the dining room.

  He was a few minutes early, but two people were waiting for him there, the young Imperial Guard captain from yesterday, now dressed in MCU, and a short, heavily-built young man dressed business casual.

  “Ah, Mr. Diener. How far did you get in my book?”

  “I’m through Volume I, Dr. Ardmore.”

  “Then you know it is first names only in the Imperial Residence. Call me, Jimmy. This young woman is Gail.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Gail.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Paul.”

  “And, of course, when His Majesty gets here, he will insist you call him Jonah. He doesn’t like Jon, so I don’t suggest that.”

  Diener was about to say he couldn’t possibly do that when the Emperor came in from the hallway.

  “Ah, Jimmy, Gail.”

  “Hi, Jonah. And you know Paul, of course.”

  Diener turned around to face the Emperor.

  “Yes, of course. Hello, Paul.”

  “Hello, Jonah.”

  “So they’ve briefed you on that at least. Good. Sit, everybody. Let’s have lunch.”

  They all sat, and the staffers who had been standing by served them. Once everyone was served, Drake dismissed the staff.

  “We’ll call if we need anything.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Burke made a hand signal to the Guardsmen standing in the corners of the door wall, and they both withdrew, closing the door behind them.”

  “Guard,” Burke addressed the ceiling.

  “Yes, Captain Burke,” a voice came back.

  “Suspend audio monitoring for one hour.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  A soft ‘bong’ tone sounded from the ceiling. Burke looked over to the light switches by the door and noted a small flashing red light on the panel. She nodded to Drake.

  “Paul, you’ve been named a member of our little cabal here. We’re going to remake the Empire, back to what it was during the Golden Age of the Four Good Emperors. We four.

  “The Empire is dying the death of a thousand cuts, and has been since Augustus the Great died and left the Throne to my great-great-grandfather. Neither he nor any of the Emperors who followed him had the slightest idea what they were doing. Including myself, to be frank, at least until I read Jimmy’s book.

  “As you read Jimmy’s book, you can see it, I hope. What was wrong with our last four rulers.”

  “Yes, Jonah. Their age, their training, and their experience.”

  Drake laughed.

  “Yes, Paul, but other than that....”

  They all laughed before Drake continued.

  “Jimmy’s accomplishments you already know, Paul. You’re reading one of them. Gail here comes from a long line of Imperial Marines. There has been a Burke from her family in the Imperial Marines for almost a hundred and fifty years.

  “Now, reading Jimmy’s book, you know I need an Heir with military experience and a solid grounding in history. Our military traditions are dissipated, though, and my predecessors made the teaching of honest history illegal.

  “Here is my solution. Jimmy and Gail are the Heirs to the Throne, to rule as co-Emperors, or Emperor and Empress Regnant, if you prefer. They actually selected you to be their Co-Consul, and I approved their choice.”

  Diener nodded.

  “I have a question then, Gail, Jimmy,” he said. “How, out of all the bureaucracy at your disposal, did you pick me?”

  “I created a database of all the people who had been Co-Consul for the Four Good Emperors,” Ardmore said. “We analyzed that, and decided on what the defining characteristics were. And then we applied those filters to the database records.”

  “Paul, you actually most resemble Geoffrey Saaret, the legendary Co-Consul who saw Trajan the Great through the wars of consolidation and midwifed the birth of the Galactic Empire,” Burke said.

  Ardmore nodded.

  “Right down to your wife’s sense of humor.”

  “Heavens. And you came up with me?”

  “Yep,” Burke said.

  “OK,” Diener said, but he didn’t sound sure, and Ardmore, Burke, and Drake laughed.

  The Historian And The Doctor

  “Come on. You said you’d go,” Burke said.

  “I hate doctors,” Ardmore said.

  “But that’s because they always told you to do something you couldn’t, and weren’t any real help. Now, come on. I can’t carry you down there.”

  Ardmore got a hopeful look at that.

  “But I can prod you at bayonet point,” Burke said.

  “OK. OK, I’m coming.”

  They were living in the family apartments in the Imperial Residence. They took the elevator down one floor and walked down the hall to the doctor’s office. Burke followed him in.

  “Hello, Dr. Ardmore.”

  He turned to Burke, who was wearing MCU.

  “Thank you, Captain. You don’t have to guard him here.”

  “No, you misunderstand. We’re promised.”

  “Oh, I see. Very well.”

  The doctor turned away and Ardmore looked at Burke. She tipped her head and shrugged. He had to stifle a laugh. In a fashion, after all, they were.

  “Sit in the diagnostic chair here, Dr. Ardmore.”

  Ardmore sat down and the doctor waited for the measurements to show up.

  “I have my instructions from His Majesty, Dr. Ardmore. The best maintenance nanites upgrades, plus whatever additional things I might recommend, cost no object. ‘As if it were for me,’ is what he told m
e.”

  “What about her?” Ardmore asked, gesturing to Burke.

  “Oh, Captain Burke has already gotten her maintenance nanites upgrades, Dr. Ardmore. She didn’t need anything additional.”

  The readings from the chair came in and the doctor viewed them in VR, having a vacant look to his eyes but speaking to Ardmore.

  “Yes. Yes. A classic case of metabolic syndrome. How much exercise do you get, Dr. Ardmore?”

  “None,” Burke said.

  “Well, I do walk back and forth to the dining room.”

  “And how far is that?”

  “Maybe a hundred feet.”

  “Thirty,” Burke said.

  “Both ways!”

  “Yes,” the doctor said, “that is the problem. Now, how much do you know about endocrinology?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Very well. There are three hormones that control much of what happens with your weight: insulin, glucagon, and ghrelin. Insulin takes sugar from the blood and stores it in your fat cells. Glucagon takes the sugar back out of your fat cells and puts it into the bloodstream. Ghrelin is what makes you hungry.”

  “Lack of food is what makes me hungry.”

  “No,” the doctor said. “You only think of it that way. But the malfunctioning of ghrelin production in the body can result in complete lack of appetite in some diseases, or in constant hunger due to a badly constructed diet in others. It has little to do with food. It often has more to do with schedule. If you eat at the same time every day, your glands will release ghrelin in anticipation of that event.”

  “Really? Is that true? That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s the imbalance of these hormones that results in poor eating habits. And conversely, poor eating habits can result in an imbalance of these hormones.”

  “That sounds like an unstable situation,” Ardmore said.

  “It can be. In metabolic syndrome, it is. In any case, we have a set of nanites we can use to give you extra control over your metabolic hormones. We can then program them to be more stable, to use your term, and act more in a manner to result in healthy body weight.”

  “So you think I should lose weight.”

  “No, actually,” the doctor said. “I think you should have a healthy body weight, which has more to do with where your weight is distributed than in how much you weigh. We’re going to put you on an exercise program as well as regulating your endocrine system.”

  “Whatever you say, doc, but I’m not really good at the whole exercise thing.”

  “We have a way around that as well, Dr. Ardmore. Once we get these nanites started, we’re going to send you round to the gym. You may not be familiar with the sort of exercise I’m talking about.”

  The doctor injected the nanites using an old-fashioned needle rather than a pulse injector, the nanites being too large – though on a microscopic scale – for pulse injection.

  “All right, Dr. Ardmore. You need to come back in a week to ten days so we can program those once they’ve set themselves up. We’ll hold off on the exercise program until we can get them programmed properly.”

  Ardmore and Burke went back to the elevators and up to the Imperial Residence.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Burke asked.

  “Easy for you to say. He’s not putting you on an exercise program.”

  “I’m already on an exercise program, ya big sissy. Now stop complaining. You’ll feel better once you’re in better shape.”

  “I am in shape,” Ardmore said.

  Burke looked at him sideways.

  “Round is a shape.”

  Ardmore and Burke went back to the doctor ten days later. He had Ardmore access some additional controls that had appeared in his VR system, and set various parameters to specific levels. Ardmore just did as he was told. He had no clue what he was adjusting. When it was over, he didn’t feel any different.

  The doctor sent them down the hall to the gym. A therapist was waiting.

  “If you could strip down to your shorts, please, Dr. Ardmore.”

  He did, and the therapist had him get up on a table. Once he had, she raised padded side walls to keep him from rolling off of it. A pair of assistants started attaching stick on electrodes – three inch diameter pads that had some sort of gooey backing – all over his body. multiple places on his legs, his arms, his abs. They had him roll over and did multiple places on his back as well.

  “All right, Dr. Ardmore. What my assistants are doing is placing gel electropads on your body. What we are going to do is run your major muscle groups through an exercise program for an hour. You need do nothing except lay there. As a matter of fact, it will be much more comfortable and effective if you go deep immersion in some VR program until I send you a message.”

  “You want me to go into VR?”

  “And ignore your body. Yes, Dr. Ardmore. Please.”

  “You call this exercise?”

  “It will give you strength, cause you to burn energy, and build muscle mass. It will not give you fine muscle control. We’ll have to work on that later, Dr. Ardmore.”

  “I thought this sort of thing didn’t really work.”

  “Without the correct program, without the latest revision of nanites, without the benefits of all the research, you’re correct. It doesn’t work. Now, if you would be so kind, Dr. Ardmore? You can set an alarm for sixty-five minutes, or I can send you a message.”

  “Send me a message, then.”

  “Very well, Dr. Ardmore.”

  Ardmore went into the recording of the Imperial Gardens he had found. Once he got there, he sent a message to Burke. ‘Why don’t you join me in the Imperial Gardens?’ She did, and they walked the gardens together.

  “Thanks for joining me, Gail.”

  “Well, it’s better than watching your body flop around like a fish on that table, Jimmy.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “I think so. They were just starting with you, tuning their parameters and stuff. I’ve seen it before, in the Imperial Marines.”

  “Is this the sort of exercise program you’re on, Gail?”

  “No, I’d rather just do the work, Jimmy. You get to like it.”

  Ardmore shivered.

  “I can’t imagine it. Well, let’s explore the gardens more thoroughly than we did last time.”

  They got to the fire pit and walked around it. They found the woodpile for it, under a little shed roof, with kindling and wax starters. They also found the hidden sprinklers, in case the fire got a little too big or out of control.

  They walked further and came to a picnic table at the side of the path that had a view down a meadow of summer flowers. This being a full recording, they could smell the flowers.

  “You know, Gail, the legend says the Emperor Trajan met Amanda Peters when she was dancing and singing in a meadow. He had followed the sound of her voice, curious as to who it was.”

  “There are a lot of meadows in the world, Jimmy, and a lot of worlds with meadows.”

  “Yes, but he was already Emperor by then, Gail. Locked into the Imperial Palace. This is the only meadow it could have been.”

  “How did she get into the Imperial Gardens, Jimmy?”

  “Her father was the gardener. She had access because she used to help. No, Trajan met her right here, three hundred and forty six years ago, in 1 GE.”

  “Oh, God, Jimmy. That gives me goose bumps. Right here. Imagine.”

  “Yes, but that was in the real Imperial Gardens, Gail, not a recording.”

  “That’s all right, Jimmy. We’ll put them back. Like they were.”

  Ardmore nodded, and they walked on.

  They had just about completed the circuit of the gardens when Ardmore got the message from the therapist.

  “I guess the session’s done. We ready?”

  “Sure, Jimmy.”

  They dropped out of VR and were back in the gym two floors down from where the Imperial Gardens were be
ing rebuilt. Ardmore still lay on the table. He wasn’t fatigued, but he felt muscle-tired.

  “Just lay there for a few minutes, Dr. Ardmore, while your muscles reoxygenate. They’re pretty depleted at the moment.”

  “Did everything go OK? With the therapy?” Ardmore asked.

  “Yes, Dr. Ardmore. Just fine. Just stay there for about fifteen minutes. Deep breathing would be best.”

  The therapist’s assistants were removing the gel electropads, rolling him this way and that to get at them.

  “So that’s exercising, huh?” Ardmore asked Burke as she came up to him. “Not so bad.”

  “This is just the first bit, Jimmy. The other stuff comes later. That will be easier than you think.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be strong.”

  Gail’s words proved prophetic. Between the nanites regulating his metabolism and the electrotherapy exercise sessions, Ardmore lost his gut and got bigger in the arms, thighs, and calves. He actually weighed more, but he was denser, so he looked slimmer.

  And, as she had said, he was strong.

  The Businessman

  Once the Co-Consul was in place, it was Diener’s job to begin to implement the Budgets, Projects, Investigations, Troubleshooting, Oversight, and Consulting groups as they had existed under the Four Good Emperors. He had read Ardmore’s book through to the end, and knew what he was about, so that was under way.

  With that in good hands, Ardmore turned his attention to what might be the two hardest nuts to crack of them all: alliances between the Throne and commercial interests and between the Throne and technical savvy.

  For the commercial interests, he actually had a place to start. The Stauss family had been staunch supporters of Trajan the Great and his successors. How staunch of supporters of the Throne they were became apparent when Ardmore had finally unraveled the Section Six mystery more completely.