“Sorry about that. Wonfuse. I had to make sure that you weren’t bluffing. You can stitch that finger up easily, no worries. Okay, I guess, for now, we’ll have to wait a while longer to learn the source of the code. Call Kadar and tell him to step down. I will be at the office tomorrow morning to clean up your mess.
“Call him now!” I screamed.
Chapter 19
Seizing Power Is Easy. Keeping it Is Hard.
“I’m not your son as no lion has ever been related to a crow.”
~ Oris
F uvo!” screamed Oris when he kicked the doors of the meeting room. I responded, “Your Highness, please take care of your health and temper.”
“My health, Fuvo? You really worry about my health? By the way, did you worry about the health of Tonias, too?” Oris said meanly.
I replied quietly, “Your highness, I worry only about your health and the health of the royal family…”
“Good, because Tonias has no health anymore. Right now, he is hanging in his cell!” he screamed at me. I didn’t know how to respond. Troubled, I just started hemming and hawing. He never had spoken to me like that before.
“Did any of you get any intelligence on Konu?” The room went silent, and all the oligarchs and the royal family members went quiet. He then looked at me again and said quietly, “Who is Konu?” Then he screamed again, “Does anyone here know who he really is?”
I replied nervously, “My services sent you a complimentary report yesterday, your Highness, about him.”
He started clapping in a humiliating way. “Waw! What a report! It blew my mind! Now that I remember…, everything is crystal clear. Although I think a few details were missing – like where he is from, how old he really is, his family, or his real name, and so on… Basically, we know nothing about the guy who is our Enemy Number One, right?” Then, he screamed, “Who is Konu?”
After just a few awkward seconds, he finally sat down on his throne, tired and stressed. He seemed that he wasn’t Oris the playful anymore. Suddenly his mother, the queen, said, “Your Highness, why are you so obsessed with this Konu? We don’t know his past because he probably has no past to tell. Unworthy people usually have no known past.”
“Mother, mother, mother…, this person, woke up from a coma as a fugitive, escaped his execution, then went back and took complete control of the entire empire – single-handedly, the same day!”
Suddenly, an oligarch close to the queen, said grotesquely, “He got lucky.”
Oris ordered the guards to arrest him, screaming, “You are lucky I didn’t cut your filthy tongue out in front of everyone, throw him out!” He sat down again on his throne. The atmosphere was getting toxic as now everyone fears for their life, including me.
Looking extremely confused, he murmured, “The Second Citizen was the most powerful person in the world. Yes, I’m saying it now more powerful than anyone past or present. He created the entire defense strategy of the Amians and paired that with the best weapons. He didn’t design phones and headsets. He designed real satellite constellations, submarines, and spaceships. He was smart, determined, and self-disciplined. As a military man, he excelled. Some reports say that even the machine was his design. That said, Konu didn’t blink when he executed him like he was a nobody.”
Echoes of his murmurings went into the heads of everyone. He was right. I reacted, “Your Highness, I suggest that we keep our preventive strikes as planned. No one will take the risk to keep the promises of that meeting. Banume can keep them if he wants, but we can’t take the chance on the uncertainties. Right now, the Amians are trying to buy some extra time, as the machine is taking three days of calculations to see the future. We know that in a couple of weeks, they will probably update the algorithm, and then it could turn into a real-time oracle, watching the future from the present. Therefore, we must strike now, your Highness. We have seven days to prepare and launch everything, and God will save us as we are doing this for all humankind, your Highness…”
“You see, Fuvo, that is also a problem that no one addressed, a machine that sees the future from the present. I don't care about their capabilities to contain us. I’m worried about the fact that the present will not be a present anymore. The time distortions are happening now. Many atomic clocks are desynchronized.”
I didn’t know what to say, as I have a limited knowledge of physics. He took a moment, looking slowly at everyone, and then said, “Leave us alone.”
As everybody leaving, he looked me straight in the eyes, and he said very loudly, “ You too, Fuvo!” That shattered me into pieces as everyone was there watching me leaving for the first time, leaving him with the royal family, to be totally excluded as anyone else. He threw me out like I was nobody to him, a total disgrace in front of everyone. I’ll never forgive him for this.
After that, I went back to my affairs, trying to swallow my pride, trying to give him excuses for my humiliation. I cried silently for a moment as I thought he may hate me, or worse, he may not even respect me now. Maybe I’m not worth his respect. I’m completely broken after what he did. It touched me deeply as I was always by his side. I gave him everything I know, and yet, I was treated like a worthless consultant. Instead of coordinating the attacks, he keeps asking for more information on this guy
