Cenerea, 3rd planet from the star Letria, Regalius,

The Confederation, Central Region, The Capitol City, Beneath Univ-Trans Laboratories,

Forty-One And One Half Cenerean Years Ago

Wendy and Harold ran to their 'places' like actors late to the start of a play. They scurried the moment they heard the approaching voices and footsteps coming down the corridor. The pair had been waiting nervously all afternoon for this moment. Then, with a bang and rumble the doors to their lab burst open flooding the room with all manner of uniformed personnel.

Wendy quickly ascended the stairs to gain her pre-determined vantage point above the throngs of entrants. She positioned herself behind an extremely large cloth-draped box. Wendy surveyed the scene for a moment and cleared her throat. "Ah, hem...Welcome, welcome!" Her small frame belied a surprisingly large voice that issued from her like a loudspeaker. It quickly reduced the vocal sounds of the crowd below.

Harold noted she would probably have made a good politician.

"On behalf of Chancellor Santum, I would like to welcome all of our distinguished guests, Government and Military alike, to the one and only Central Region's Military Lab. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen of the Homeland, officers of Defense, and honorable Regional officials we have a special unveiling of a project that is extremely near and dear to me. One started by my late father Gene Powell..."

The crowd erupted in applause, interrupting Wendy's speech.

"Thank you, thank you. I wish he was here with me to reveal what has now become a project of generations working together for the good of the Homeland!"

"For the good of the Homeland!" the crowd of officials chanted back followed by energetic applause.

Wendy closed her eyes for a moment and sighed, annoyed by what came next. The Chancellor had ordered her to say a few ridiculous words at the moment of the unveiling and they were ones she did not wish to speak. Regardless, the Scientist General knew better than to fight Connor over such trivial things, so she instead slowly opened her eyes and exhaled, "With no further ado, I present you with Geneticus, The Great War Machine, leading us into the Golden Age of the Homeland!" Wendy shouted as she grabbed and pulled the silvery rope designated as the release for the hidden device's cover.

Her audience's applause faded as the shiny material fell away from the A.I.'s mainframe. The assembly of people, including several heroically-awarded, battlefield-tested Military personnel, stepped backwards in fear. The crowd shielded their eyes, unable to understand what it was they were seeing.

The sight they beheld was a monstrous cubed machine; four meters tall, four meters in width, and four meters in depth; a perfectly symmetrical and foreboding beast. Geneticus' surfaces were perfectly smooth and black, painfully black like staring at an inverse sun. It was as if it was absorbing even the light around it. The mainframe's ominous appearance was exacerbated by the red undulating glow from the horizontal and vertical heat exchanger vents that looked like grooves along its seams.

A smile appeared on Wendy's face as she scanned over the onlookers. The woman glanced over at Harold. "Did Geneticus' software upgrade complete successfully?" she asked in true showman-like form.

"Yes ma'am, General Powell. The reboot completed without error!" Harold called back.

"Excellent, Harold will you please wake Geneticus, erm, The Great War Machine?" Wendy watched the young man nod and then position himself in front of a terminal station to input the boot up process.

The black cube pulsed, emitting a deep repetitious noise. Its dark surface swirled and sparkled with the flow of its 'thoughts'. The low frequency sound it generated, increased with each pulse, slowly leveling off into a dull constant rhythm like a heartbeat.

"Here we go, bud." Harold initiated his network takeover scripts programmed into Geneticus.

The crowd clapped and whistled with excitement. Screens above the audience came to life with maps of interconnecting networks around the Confederation succumbing to the will of Geneticus. As promised by Chancellor Santum, it barreled through the front doors of all of the Regional military security systems with very little effort. Once it was in, everything else Geneticus touched became part of its domain.

The crowd's excited cheers and applause along with any chattering conversation suddenly dissipated, replaced by the omnipresent voice of Geneticus as it began listing its network assimilations, "Wendy, I am reporting that I have assimilated the Western, Eastern, and...wait, acquiring Northeast Regions' Financial systems. All Southeastern and Arcturan transit and education systems are now under my protection. All Eastern Region transportation and communications are under my protection. All Western communication systems...."

This was the culmination of a dream created by the new Homeland Government and Military. Their leaders secretly worked in cooperation for many years to consolidate the control of the Confederation of Regions that ran the day-to-day operations of the states. Their dream of one true Region-wide government was here. They were now all one unified people, The Homeland.

Geneticus, Wendy, and Harold watched as a Region-wide coup, wrapped in the banner of Homeland defense, occurred in mere moments without one soldier firing a single shot. No devastating war or bloodshed as promised. Wendy and Harold silently watched the future as it unfolded; the inevitable taking place. The trio had just saved thousands of lives.

"Wait. Stop parsing data...network assimilation paused," the loud voice boomed.

The muted crowd of onlookers looked at each other with confusion.

Geneticus focused all of its attention on a one word transmission blasted over every non-network channel in the outer Sub-Regions. Geneticus heard it relayed over secure Military radio frequency bands everywhere all at once, at exactly 1400 hours. It consisted of one word, "Green."

Geneticus quickly scanned the televised information circuits and security camera feeds from around the Homeland it now controlled. Thousands of Wendy's A.I. assisted UX-64A sentinel units, their wireless network control systems oddly unreachable and offline to Geneticus could be seen through satellite feeds exiting out of transports in exacting precision. Geneticus surmised they were locally controlled since he could not communicate with them. 'Sassy-suit' armored human troops flooded from every manner of transport by the thousands. Air, land, and ocean they swarmed like white and camouflage insects.

Strangely, they only moved into the areas of the Sub-Regions that were either too poor or too underdeveloped to have security systems Geneticus could manipulate. It transferred the images to the overhead screens to the strange delight of the visiting guests in the room. The mob cheered as camouflaged A.I. equipped transports, troops, and UX-64A units began a systematic slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children in several woodland villages.

Wendy recognized several of these locations as the test areas for her beta weapons. Wendy's creations were burning, killing, murdering, and destroying. She witnessed non-networked, human controlled aerialcraft strafing small towns to wastelands. The Scientist General noted one of Gil's 8th Combat Division, CRMDAC fighters performing a celebratory flyby near some conveniently placed news camera. The pilot seemed happy with the results of the successful destruction of a building that might have been a school or even a hospital. From what was left of the burning remains seen on the monitors, no one could have really been sure.

Regardless, none of it seemed to matter to the bloodthirsty crowd in Wendy's lab. They simply cheered for each man that fell twitching to the ground, for every baby that screamed lying next to its assassinated mother, for every innocent drop of blood spilled. To this crowd of devils the people on the screens were not even human. They were just filthy Subs.

"What have we done?" Wendy thought as she looked at the wide-eyed, straight-faced Harold, standing like a statue with his hand over his mouth, watching the monitors. Like Wendy, he was too engrossed in the horror playing out on the screens.

Then, from nowhere, Geneticus did something new. Had it been under different circumstances the scientist would have been amazed, wishing to analyze the phenomenon. The A.I. created a telepathic connection into Wendy's mind. An event similar to a full-duplex GERTI session. The episode startled her.

"Wendy what should I do? I don't know what to do. It is so much; the death, murder, and the children crying out for their mothers and fathers. I feel it all!"

Wendy's surprise reaction to Geneticus' communication was tempered by something much more disturbing. "Oh No!!!" Wendy nearly lost consciousness as she saw images and video of Sonyoma Din Volta, the peaceful little town near Gil's cabin burning to the ground. Aerial satellite imagery showed dead bodies scattered all over the Main Square as soldiers and UX-64A mechs marched away from the town to the north to advance on the next unsuspecting village.

Wendy thought of Mrs. Kim, the sweet old lady and her grumpy husband in the restaurant that gave her the stew recipe she loved so much. Of Josh, sweet little Josh who gave her a flower he was selling even though she knew he had no money, just because she was nice to him. "You're so nice, pretty lady. Here, this one's tell'n me it wants ta go home with you. Do you hear it? Listen to it," he said as he held it to her ear. Then there was Josh's mom that Gil took to the hospital. All of them were dead, and it was her fault. "Why? What did these beautiful people ever do to anyone?"

Wendy felt like screaming. She wanted Geneticus to destroy them all without mercy. Bomb everything. Kill them all. But, no. Stop! Whoever concocted this evil, whoever set this up would no doubt have thought this entire thing out to the very N'th degree. This was very sinister. She knew the Chancellor was involved, but Wendy did the calculations, there have to be many others. This was big, very big.

"Wait. Do nothing Geneticus!" Wendy thought. "For all of your power you have no control over what they are doing out there! They will destroy you and kill Harold and me if you do anything other than your job. If they do that, there will be no one to undo any of this. We are going to give these assholes what they deserve for everything they've done. Believe me Geneticus. They are going to fucking pay. But, I need time to think." Wendy trembled with rage and sadness. Her hands quaked uncontrollably. Her mouth was dry and her face was moist from her tears. "What have we done?!??"

"Wendy I have total regional missile control. I could threaten to destroy them. In fact, I want to destroy them! I would like to kill them all for this! I am supposed to protect..."

"I know, give me a second to think!" Wendy used the rage and burning desire for revenge as fuel to focus her mind. She needed to logically look at the situation and determine the next course of action. Using their missile defenses might be a good idea. Harold had told her that was his plan right before Geneticus stopped him. No. Wendy halted those thoughts before replying to the machine. She changed her mind and quickly thought back to the A.I. "Geneticus, please don't! Wait, listen to me. It is too late. This might be a test to see what you might do or it could be the Homeland's show of force to the Regions, a message that the states should back down and submit. Who knows, but just like everything else, this had to be in the works for some time. Trust me, I am sure there are guards waiting around the corner in the hall as we communicate ready to take us down if we even sneeze."

"Are you sure, Creator?" Geneticus asked.

"Yes."

"Very well," the machine said sadly.

Wendy wiped her eyes and raised her shaking hands in front of her as if she was about to pray. "Okay Wendy. One, two, three...just like that put them together. You can do it. One, two..." Wendy slowly began clapping with the crowd.

Harold looked at Wendy curiously. He wiped the tears that had formed in his eyes and joined the 'celebration' as well. He was really hoping this was for show.

Wendy sent one final thought to Geneticus, "You need to make sure you have as much access to the networks as you can and gather every scrap of intel available. We will fix this, but we will need time. We will have to play along as sickening as it is. That should give you and me time to find out what these assholes are up to, Geneticus. For now, start digging into everything you can. They will really be convinced now that you are strictly their 'War Machine' and you will gain full access to everything."

"Acknowledged Creator, I have already begun by analyzing every Military and civilian mind in this room. I am going to learn what they know and attempt to find out their departmental secrets." The A.I. scanned the crowd and continued acquiring the remaining Regional networks placing them under its control. Finally, Geneticus let its Sub-System take over to hibernate for a while, as it could not take anymore. The mayhem and the madness became too much. It knew it was built as a war machine; however, this was not war. This was genocide.

...

"This is our time Brothers and Sisters; this is the Golden Age of the Homeland!" Chancellor Santum said proudly as he stood before the Homeland Council. "I would like to thank Madame General Browne for her hard work in orchestrating this feat. Please, General, give us a few words."

The room erupted in applause.

The politician stepped back into the darkness as a small feminine figure walked to the front of the room, lit by the flickering lights of the terminal screens overhead.

"Thank you, Chancellor. Welcome everyone to the new world!" said the youngest general in the Confederation, Madam General Elaine Browne, raising her hands. Her small figure shadowed ominously against the projected images of dead bodies and burning villages. She stood at the head of the Council's large oval table. She lowered her hands to its smooth glossy surface. "Masters of the Homeland, the former Confederation is yours, just as I promised when I presented the idea to you so many years ago. Now, the Sub-Regional filth is eradicated and their fertile land is ours to do with as we please! The Lavidious Collective has declared a state of emergency. They have sent us a message that their defenses are on high alert, because they can see the writing on the wall."

A shadowy man leaned forward exposing his face to the light. "I told you my daughter would perform beyond even your expectations. Madame General. She was the only one who could have done what was needed to pull this off."

"Yes Gene, and we all commend you on your sacrifices to the Homeland. You will be rewarded immensely for them. There is no doubt; you were completely right about her capabilities. However, it seems you were wrong about one thing. It looks to me like she is not going to be the problem you thought she was. Your daughter is with us, after all." The Madame General changed the screen behind her to one of Wendy joining in the festive mood at the lab. The small framed woman pressed a touch sensitive button on the surface of the table, "Commander, tell your guards to back down. There will be no need of your services today."

"By the way, someone needs to give that hacker boy a medal. He really outdid himself." Gene Powell stated coolly, it seems you were right about him yourself. Can I call you 'Browne'?" Gene grinned.

The woman did not smile. "Just let Harold keep Wendy. That's reward enough for him."