A Tale of Three Men: Part Four, Part Two

This is a tale of three men. Each suffered tremendous adversity; each overcame it, in their own way, and found their own success. Each would, by their life’s end, shape the future of multitudes. This is the fourth and final part of that tale; split in two, as before, to keep the posts to a reasonable size. (Not that it worked with this one.) It is probably not a history.

Over the last four years, William A. Zhang had continued his research into nanotechnology with government funding and a growing number of colleagues. His daring insertion of nanites into his own body paved a way, as more and more advanced nanites were created and inserted. Most of Zhang’s colleagues – now followers – had also infected themselves with nanites, giving them immunity to bullets, superhuman strength and vision, and limited reconstruction ability – able to regrow lost hands or feet over a period of several weeks. Rumors were that William had even stranger and more potent nanites operating inside his body.

Zhang’s stated intent was to transcend humanity – to enhance himself, through nanotechnological implants or other means, beyond every human limit. His followers agreed. And when the government became increasingly shy of Zhang’s goals and methods and cut off funding, Zhang began to simply seize necessary materials, by force if necessary.

As the Second Homeworld War raged on, entering its seventh month, a relatively minor asteroid slipped through the Homeworld Defence Force perimeter and impacted near the homeworld capitol. Over eight million people died in the ensuing shockwave and radioactive burst. News reported noted that among them was Jeremy Desmond, in the capitol on unspecified ‘business.’ The asteroid struck while he was eating dinner with several major politicians; the restaurant collapsed atop them. Rescuers found only bodies too mutilated to be identified.

His main nemesis was gone, but Kendrick continued the war against the crumbling HDF. The League of Desmond had persisted, even with its leader dead, and Kendrick now stated that the goal of the war was (and always had been) to unify all of the start-system under a single government. In a speech broadcast across the system, he repeated these aims, and further clarified his hopes for this pan-system government: freedom, prosperity, and peace would all follow from such centralized control. It would be a new dawn for humanity, free of the bickering and warfare that had always plagued it. The justice that had been denied his insurrectionist comrades would finally be granted to everyone.

To further this aim, Kendrick sent an open appeal to Zhang’s posthumanists. He demanded that they assist in the control of the homeworld, either by seizing a spaceport for the Free Coalition troops to land at, or by seizing the capitol itself and offering a surrender to the Free Coalition. If they did not, or if they violated strict regulations on nanotechnology research or use, they would be destroyed by any means necessary. “No democratic society can exist,” Kendrick justified, “when certain elements of the populace have the technological ability to dominate and coerce the vast majority of that society. No light can shine if giants stand in the way.”

These terms were unacceptable to the Posthumanists. Twenty-three of them commandeered a commercial flight to a military control base, overpowered the two-hundred guards in a matter of minutes, and launched a specially prepared missile at Kendrick’s birthworld. Free Coalition vessels were completely unable to stop it; ships that approached were consumed by a nanite cloud and turned into a shell for the missile. The missile itself was able to dodge every attack, using nanites alternately to shield itself from attacks and as projectiles to assimilate attackers. It arrived at its target on schedule and promptly proceeded to turn the planet into undifferentiated goo. Five hundred million people died, reduced a pool of nanites. The casualties exceeded the entirety of all other deaths in the war by a factor of two, and shocked the Free Coalition.

Zhang and his followers never felt the need to publicly justify the attack. After all, “Science must march on.”

As Kendrick watched the genocide from orbit, a small craft stealthily docked with his orbital station. The onboard communications array was disabled before security noticed an intrusion; then the infiltrators moved to attack Kendrick himself. It was a battle between the most skilled and best armed combatants of the war, with both the infiltrators and Kendrick’s bodyguard power-armoured and armed with heavy weapons. The battle was close-fought, with elites falling left and right and gigantic sections of hull blasted out of existence. For a moment, it appeared as though the attack would be successfully resisted: then the last infiltrator jumped the last of Kendrick’s bodyguards and killed them from behind. Only two men were left standing: Kendrick Ojalfsson himself, and the last infiltrator, Jeremy Desmond.

The two power-armoured figures hunted one another through the ruined station, a lethal game of cat and mouse. Kendrick’s voice spoke on radio channels at frequent intervals: threatening that Free Coalition ships would soon arrive, denouncing the attack, Jeremy’s “betrayal”, the war itself. Finally, the two faced each other, Kendrick breathing heavily. He shouted, “Justice!”, and charged, gun blazing. Jeremy sidestepped and gunned Kendrick Ojalfsson down.

The Second Colony War was over at last. Without its charismatic leader, the Free Coalition collapsed into an anarchic heap of local governments, stations and asteroid feuding over jurisdiction and territory. The homeworld was in scarcely better shape: most of the government was gone, and the League of Desmond had abruptly split in a bloody coup, Jeremy’s chosen successor and an ambitious subordinate battling in the streets. William Zhang, who could have helped to rebuild, refused. His posthumanists traveled with him to the remains of Kendrick’s birthworld, which they manipulated from orbit into becoming a ship of vast size. On it they traveled out of the system, to visit the stars.

Only Jeremy Desmond was left of the three great men: the youngest of them, only twenty-three years old. He had lost everything that he owned twice before, and now he had again: even his life. Without a strong hand to guide it, the system would devolve into chaos, little governments achieving little things, tyrannies and democracies arising in unfortunate disproportion. The wreckage of the Colony Wars would remain for generations. Perhaps, compared to the excesses of the great governments of the recent past, that would be an improvement. But Jeremy Desmond saw no reason that it should be.

“And perhaps… perhaps I will be a great man… or perhaps I shall live to be a very old man, respected and esteemed in my new nation… And perhaps I shall hold office and this is what I’m trying to tell you: Perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don’t you see that there will be young men and women to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even… replenish all I was.” (A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry)