King of All I Survey
Chapter 92: Bailey’s Believe it or Not!

Chapter 92: Bailey’s Believe it or Not!

"So, first of all," I said as I walked over to the conference room door and locked it from the inside, "I lied to you."

Donaldson slammed an open palm on the table, anger clouding his face.

"Wait. Let me explain. I will not lie to you again. In a moment you’ll understand why I could not give you this information before we had signed NDAs. All good?"

Donaldson let out a heavy breath, but both men nodded their agreement.

"Good. Looking at the math I used, have either of you, both accomplished mathematicians, ever seen anything like it? Do you agree that it opens up a broad set of possible advances in physics, chemistry, and quantum computing?"

Wagner’s face registered surprise, "I hadn’t... yes, yes. I see..."

Donaldson nodded.

"So, how likely is it that an eight-year-old with a third-grade education and no specialized instruction could have developed it in its entirety on his own during summer vacation?"

"I knew it!" Donaldson said. Then his brow wrinkled in confusion, "but... I mean, clearly you understand it thoroughly... Who..."

"I do. I will tell you quite honestly, it took me about 48 hours to learn it starting from a base of third grade arithmetic."

"No... not possible..." Donaldson interjected.

Wagner looked at him with a little bit of annoyance, "Donaldson, this is going to take a lot longer if you keep interrupting after every sentence. Let him finish, believe him or don’t, but save your questions and comments until the end."

"Fine!" Donaldson snapped.

I nodded a thank you to Wagner, then continued, "So clearly this didn’t appear by magic, someone, somewhere had to develop it over time. Who? Who could have done that without anyone else on Earth hearing even a hint of it?" I paused to let them come up empty in their mental search of candidates. "The answer is nobody on Earth could have done it."

"Somebody did!" Donaldson exclaimed, then looked sheepishly at Wagner, "Sorry. Go on."

"You’re right, somebody did. It just so happens that the somebody is not from Earth."

"Oh, for fuck’s sake!" Donaldson could not contain himself, "Little green men? You don’t expect us to believe..."

I cut him off sharply, "I expect you to listen quietly!" I fixed him with a direct gaze. "Thank you."

I took a deep breath to calm myself and give the other two a chance to do likewise. "I won’t go into the physiology of the species that developed it, unfortunately, they are in fact green, but that’s not important. What is important is that this species is part of a larger galactic empire comprised of many intelligent species from throughout the galaxy. There are several such empires, and much of the galaxy has yet to be explored even by these advanced civilizations. The various empires are rivals, but not currently at war. They do, however, have a habit of finding and exploiting new worlds with nascent intelligent species such as humans on Earth. You might surmise that humanity would be completely defenseless against such an advanced alien space-faring species with weapons and technologies that we can’t even imagine. That is, in fact, the case. They could destroy us utterly, but they prefer to be more subtle. Each new world is prized for the unique things it can offer the galactic community. In the case of Earth, coffee and chocolate have proven quite popular throughout the galaxy. How does that work? How could Earth provide enough produce for a galaxy? How would you transport it to hundreds of worlds separated by thousands of light years? Well, if you can manipulate sub-atomic particles, you don’t need to transport anything except information, specifically the molecular structure to be recreated on demand wherever and whenever desired".

I had their rapt attention now. Their eyes were focused on me intently, listening to every word, images of distant worlds, no doubt running through their imaginations.

"Traders seek out new worlds and try to buy licensing rights to unique products from local people at ridiculously low prices. Then, they license the new commodity around the galaxy, collecting royalty payments every time any being on any planet uses a molecular synthesizer to make themselves a cup of Earth coffee or whatever. The profits can be enormous."

Donaldson’s eyes were huge as I could almost hear the sound of cash registers in his head as he tried to imagine how many people would be paying that royalty.

"However, new worlds, like Earth, are vulnerable to any other galactic power who could just waltz in with a single warship and record the structure of everything, then blast the planet into ruins. The Galactic Union, who discovered Earth, however, is a powerful empire that nobody really wants to mess with. So, the Galactic Union offers new worlds protection contracts with a limited duration. These contracts are very expensive, but Earth’s share of early returns from royalties on new products easily covers the cost. Additionally, Earth can use its new funds to buy licenses for things like food synthesizers, dark energy power generators, spaceships, medical advances, advanced mathematics, and other scientific advances. Sounds like a good deal, right? But the Galactic Union traders also do their best to acquire trading licenses from primitive civilizations under ridiculously lop-sided terms. You might imagine buying Manhattan for twenty pounds of cheap beads, as an analogy. Furthermore, as the Galactic Union acquires more and more product recipes from the new planet, its value to them as an ongoing entity diminishes. By then, though, they have paid a great deal of money, even at lop-sided rates, to the developing world. To recoup even that, they increase the price of the defense contract each year, in our case. Eventually, Earth can no longer afford to pay for the Galactic Union’s protection, and the Galactic Union has the rights to all the most valuable products the planet has to offer. So, the Galactic Union abandons the new world, making it fair game for any other civilization to raid. There’s not much value left, but there are often things the Galactic Union overlooked that are worth enough to make it worthwhile to send a warship and some elite troops armed with powerful defensive and offensive technologies to scour the planet for everything it has left, then blast it into the stone age (or worse)."

I paused, "Whether you believe what I’m saying or not, are your following me so far?"

Donaldson nodded solemnly. Wagner’s lips were pursed, his brow knit tightly. He nodded as well.

"Good. In the case of Earth, the first Galactic Union trader had the bad fortune to run into me. He asked me to bring him to Earth’s leader..."

Wagner snorted, and now it was Donaldson turn to glare the older scientist into silence.

I smiled. "Right, so I told him I was Earth’s Ruler. Apparently, he felt that I would be easy to swindle so he accepted me at my word and we filed the Galactic Union Treaty recognizing me as the Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space."

Wagner shook his head disapprovingly.

"I know, it’s a long title, but, hey, I’m eight-years-old and it sounded pretty cool at the time. Anyway, I think I turned out to be a tougher negotiator than he imagined as, perhaps, Professor Donaldson can attest? Anyway, I have developed a long-range plan to save the Earth from destruction long enough for us to build our technical and economic base to defend ourselves and take our place as an equal member among galactic civilizations."

I smiled and spread my arms to either side. "That’s where you gentlemen fit in."