A Persian Welcome, Part 3
“Uh…Lady—er—ma’am—uh—Your Highness—I mean—Majesty—Princess,” Alexandra stammered, “With—all d-due—respect, I…I thought you were dead.”
“Please drop the formalities, Alexandra,” Wilhelmina said, “I gave you permission to just call me Wilhelmina. Or Willie, if you want. And the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.”
Gebhard pointed at Alexandra. “
This is the friend you were talking about? The one who could help you with the power?”
“What power?”
“I don’t think this is a good place to talk,” Gunduz said, “We’re literally in the middle of a hallway.”
They regrouped in Alexandra’s lab. It was a big room with a high ceiling, much like the labs in Damascus. Rows of large supercomputers with equally large terminals had been set up around a large reactor. A window in the side of the reactor showed its interior, which was glowing with a light blue hue. Their little group sat at a table in front of the window.
“So where’s the family, Willie?” Gunduz said. “Heard you had a kid a while ago.”
“
Grandson,” Wilhelmina said.
“Well, your son got started on his own family early,” Gunduz said, “Unlike my own son.”
“I didn’t know you were so interested in my family. You never answered my invitation to be my maid of honor. Or attended any of my family events. You went out of your way to avoid me at Grandpa’s funeral.”
“Well I was busy!”
“You always say that!”
“So I assume Franz is busy? And Joseph as well? Where are they?”
You JUST had to go there, Gunduz.
Wilhelmina focused on her glasses, bringing the splotches of blood into focus. Even after two months, Franz’s blood was still there. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“They were killed in Yavdi.”
Please, I don’t want to talk about it again.
Gunduz noticed her distress and immediately understood. “My apologies.”
Gunduz may go too far sometimes, but she immediately knows when she crosses that line and backs off.
“Friedrich’s all I got now.” Wilhelmina protectively put a hand around Friedrich.
“I’m so sorry.”
Gunduz looked at Ilyana. “And who’s this young lady here?
“This is Grand Duchess Ilyana Romanova. My distant relative. We lost her grandfather in Yavdi.”
“I want to make them pay,” Ilyana muttered.
A look of alarm briefly flashed across Gunduz’s face, but she quickly shook it off and returned to looking annoyed all the time.
“You’ve lost so many people,” Alexandra said, “I can’t believe to imagine what you’ve all been through.”
“But at least it’s all over now,” Izinchi said, “We’re in civilization again, which means modern amenities and beds!”
“You
really want a good night’s sleep, don’t you?” Gebhard said.
“Of course I do! Ye don’t?”
Wilhelmina said nothing while the general and senator bantered again. Gunduz’s comment had brought back bad memories. She looked to her side, hand reaching out, but there was nobody there.
I still miss Franz. His laughs. His encouragement. The times we hung out in the evening, just having fun. I miss Joseph too. The times I played Mario Kart with him and let him win. The times he actually managed to beat me when I was trying. Even the times he insisted he didn’t like my choice of games. He always liked multiplayer shooters. I remember all those times I had to give him a stern talking to for the language he used over chat. I miss Vasily. Although we got off on the wrong foot, and we only knew each other for a few months, he was still family. He died before I could learn more about him. And I miss Lisa. As much as I try to remember…I can’t remember much about her. I know I know more, but I can’t recall. I can barely picture her face now. I’m close to forgetting my own daughter-in-law. Joseph’s wife. Friedrich’s mother. Shameful.
“Uh, Alexandra, a question,” Gebhard said. “Are you sure it’s safe to sit like this? I’m not sure if I should be covered in this blue light.”
“It’s safe,” Alexandra said, “The reaction doesn’t produce any harmful radiation, due to the superconductors we use and fusion reactions naturally being far less radioactive—actually, the radiation levels are so low they pose no health risk—but I reinforced the window to block it out just in case. I’ve at least tested it against myself for the last couple months.”
“Not encouraging,” Izinchi said.
“I promise it’s safe!” Alexandra said. “The thing I’m most worried about is it overloading and exploding, but I’ve made sure that won’t happen—”
“Anyways, to continue where I left off, before we got sidetracked,” Wilhelmina said, “This is Elisabeth Alexandra Hansen. Named after my mother. Remember that incident about ten years ago when all those Internet trolls trashed one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century just because they thought the lead contributor only got credit for being a girl? That was her.”
Alexandra looked at the floor. “I can’t believe you remembered that less than stellar moment in my life.”
“And I can’t believe you were hired by Gunduz herself.”
“Sometimes, I can’t believe that either. So what brings you here today?”
“Princess Four-Eyes here is my…guest.”
Wow, rude. Is this retaliation for bringing up FFVII?
Wilhelmina looked at Gunduz. “Try friend.”
“
Guest.” Gunduz was adamant.
Wilhelmina rolled her eyes. “Really, Gunduz?”
Alexandra noticed Izinchi next. “Is that…Senator Ochimeca? The PMS senator?”
“Aye, yours truly!” Izinchi waved her hands with a flourish.
“I thought you died in Russia.”
“The rumors of
my death were
also greatly exaggerated. Just like the ‘some people did something’ line.”
“The
what line?”
“Finally, someone who doesn’t remember!”
“I’m General Gebhard Remmele.” Gebhard shook Alexandra’s hand politely. “As the highest ranking Heer officer in the loyalist forces, I’m technically Megas Domestikos.”
“Uh, nice to meet you, General. Unfortunately, I don’t know who you are.”
Izinchi laughed and patted Gebhard on the back. “Dinnae worry, not being remembered isn’t always a bad thing!”
“What are you doing here, Alexandra?” Wilhelmina said.
“Betharium research,” Gunduz said, “She’s working on creating a betharium-based energy source. Ideally for use in combat. But I would be lucky if I even got a light turned on with it by the end of the week.”
Alexandra pointed at the reactor. “We recently hit 15% betharium efficiency. Which is a great improvement, but I doubt we’ll be able to get that much further.”
“I stand corrected. At this rate, we’d be lucky if we can even power my frakking toaster.”
Alexandra stopped. She took a moment to process the people around her.
“Alright, how do I carry on a conversation with people like you? A princess, a senator, a general, two Yavdian soldiers, one Turkish soldier, and the goddamn Shahbanu.”
“
Frakking Shahbanu.”
Gunduz always was obsessed with semantics.
Alexandra snickered. “Sounds like the setup for one of Magnus’ jokes. I don’t think I can just start with ‘how’s your day going’?”
“Well, I won’t mind,” Wilhelmina said, “My day’s been…actually okay. Compared to the last few weeks.”
Three young adults entered the room, and Alexandra’s face lit up. “Oh, right on time! Come over here!”
“Alexandra, why the hell are the princess, the Shahbanu, Senator Ochimeca, a Roman general, and three Yavdian and Turkish soldiers sitting in front of our reactor?” Magnus said. “This sounds like a setup for one of my lame jokes.”
“Long story. Anyways, this is Magnus Kvensen, my husband.”
“A joke…hmmm…” Thea said. “How about: the princess, the Shahbanu, and Senator Ochimeca walk into a bar…”
“Where Senator Ochimeca proceeds to get wasted, fire up the karaoke machine, and badly sing some random Cantopop song,” Izinchi said, “Actually happened once when I was on a diplomatic visit to China. Doing treaty negotiations, that kind of stuff.”
“I’m surprised you’re that open about it,” Wilhelmina said.
“If Schmitz’s right-wing propaganda machine is going to blow every little detail of my life out of context, I might as well have some fun. And besides, the bloody Emperor of China was there—back when he was a wee prince and auld Mingzhong was still around. Lad couldn’t sing to save his life, but we got the treaty signed, and then we hit the bar. I see that as an absolute win!”
“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself,” Thea said, “I’m Thea Tesla.”
“Tesla?” Gebhard said. “As in Theodor Tesla?”
Hold on, that
Theodor?!
“He’s my brother, biologically. By any other means? Hell no. He tried to kill me a couple times because of my life choices. Did you know he passed that Nullification Act that stripped women’s rights because he disapproved of my boyfriend?”
Wilhelmina’s blood started boiling the instant she heard that. She clenched her fists.
Was that why I lost my titles and status? Because that billionaire got mad his sister was dating someone he didn’t like?! And he forced my uncle to show up at my house to personally do it?! I swear when I get back to Berlin, first thing on my agenda is show that idiot how it feels like to be put in place.
“Thea Tesla…” Samir said. “Growing up, I’d hear the news talking about the ‘wayward Tesla sibling’.”
Thea reddened. “Oh, that’s how they talked about me in Yavdi back then? A little embarrassing. I didn’t think people in Yavdi cared about me that much. Don’t you guys have your own sisters of billionaires to gossip about?”
“Not really. And if we did, I wouldn’t know. I don’t follow that stuff.”
“Private Tetchu here was lucky to even have news talking about you,” Gulichi said, “My village got absolutely nothing. I have no idea whatever the
Tuonela you’re all talking about.”
“Well, if you’re anything like your brother knowledge-wise, Thea, I’m not surprised Alexandra here got as far as she did,” Wilhelmina said.
“Oh, no, Alexandra did most of the reactor work. She actually pesters me to do more to catch up.”
“Hey!” Alexandra said.
“But I’ve got another project to work on. Alex, dear?”
“Oh, of course.” Alex walked over with a Panopticon nullifier. “Alex—”
“Humboldt-Frank?” Izinchi said. “Son of Anders Humboldt and Diana Frank?”
“Finally, someone remembers my full last name, and it’s Senator Ochimeca of all people!”
“Another lad remembers
me!”
“Huh, imagine that,” Gebhard said.
“Anyways, I’m engaged to Thea here. And I don’t like bringing up my parents.”
“You’re engaged to Dr. Tesla here? Lucky you.”
“Dr. Tesla? Oh, please, I’m just Thea here.”
“I tell myself I’m lucky every day to be with the good doctor.”
Thea blushed. “Thanks, Alex.”
“You’re really pretty, miss,” Ilyana said, “Who does your hair?”
“I do it myself. I can teach you, if you want.”
“Really? Yay!” Ilyana beamed.
“You give hair styling lessons now?” Alexandra said.
“She should’ve asked you, because my hair’s almost always a mess these days,” Thea said, “But something about her tells me I shouldn’t tell her no even if I wanted to...”
“If we’re done talking about hair styling—or lack thereof—then we should get to discussing business,” Gunduz said.
Thea put up her hands. “Alright, alright, I get it. Alexandra and Magnus’ responsibility is working on the reactor. Meanwhile, Alex and I are focused on what we now call the Argeiphontes: a way to not only neutralize Panopticons, but also hijack their data to gather valuable intelligence about their users.”
“Argeiphontes is one of my highest priorities for R&D. Unfrotunately, I haven’t seen any usable results so far.”
“Ma’am, we’ve gotten most of the design ready to go. But we ran into an unforseen issue. Alex?”
“The backdoor we planned to gain access through seems to have been reinforced recently. We intercepted a patch sent out around two weeks ago. Documentation said it was in response to a glitch caused in November by ‘the Russian government’.”
“Also known as Olga Kirova.”
“The area around the backdoor has been reworked. The backdoor itself was untouched, so it seems like Argus is still unaware of its existence for now, but getting through it will be even more difficult. There is a continuous loop of security checks regularly sweeping through the entire execution environment to make sure the checksum is—”
Gunduz waved a hand to cut him off. “If you don’t switch to plain German, I’m going to stab through my eardrums with the same godsdamn kabab skewer.”
“Basically, if we insert our script the way we initially planned, the security checks will catch the addition on the next sweep, since it changes the checksum. However, we think we found a way around it.”
“If we can just cause the entire system to reboot, or at least go down for a fraction of a second, perhaps we can still do what we originally want,” Thea said, “What we’d do is use an EMP field to bring down the system, interrupting the loop. We inject the script, which means the checksum changes. But when the loop comes back up, it will need to get the checksum to compare against the rest of the code.”
“It’ll get the new checksum and see nothing wrong with the injected script. I have to thank Thea for coming up with that idea. I admit I was stuck on the checksum issue for a while.”
“I’m still hung up on one thing: we don’t have an EMP field we can generate on a whim. And in such a way that it is localized and coordinated with the script injection.”
“Actually…” Gunduz said.
“What is it?” Wilhelmina said.
“Coincidentally, I just brought in
another group of people who had traveled a long way. These people came from within occupied Europe itself. And one of them just so happens to have brought special bullets that generate localized EMP fields.”
Thea took a step back. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m the frakking Shahbanu. I don’t lie.”
Yep, that’s Gunduz. She does lie, though, but she makes sure nobody believes she does.
Thea quickly recovered from her shock. “Get me one of those bullets as soon as possible. This could be the breakthrough I was looking for!”
Gunduz nodded. “Already put in the order. Expected you to say that. Even sent out orders to have the group transferred here so you can talk to them yourself. Which reminds me, Alexandra, you wouldn’t happen to have any epidemiology training, would you? That group also brought in a biological sample of interest to us and…”
“Ma’am, with all due respect, I’m a physicist, not a physician. My mom was the physician. Doctor of medicine, not of philosophy or physics.”
“But your mom was also a physicist. I’ve read
Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation, you know.”
“She changed careers soon afterward,” Alexandra said, “Her college interests were all over the place before she settled on medicine. Like many of her generation, I guess. I took a hint and stayed in physics.”
Like many of her generation...I’m from a later generation, but that was definitely me in college tool
“Gunduz, you’re scaring her,” Wilhelmina said.
“Willie, they’ve been scared for weeks, and they haven’t broken down yet. It’s fine. Anyways, I’ll send the sample to our nearest hospital.”
“We’ve talked a lot about ourselves,” Alexandra said, “How about you?”
“Well, you already know me, and you’re familiar with Gebhard and Izinchi here,” Wilhelmina said, “Samir?”
Samir waved. “Nothing special about me. I’m a Yavdian soldier who somehow ended up here.”
Gulichi shook his head and pointed at Samir. “Don’t look at me, he dragged me here with him.”
“You wanted to come here.”
Leyla rolled her eyes. “I’m probably going to transfer back to the Turkish Army as soon as I get in contact with them, and they’ll probably transfer me to Saikhangiin Börte in Astrakhan as planned. I don’t even know why I’m here to begin with.”
Gulichi looked disappointed.
“Well, I think we’re done with introductions,” Wilhelmina said, “It was nice—”
“Wait a minute,” Alexandra interrupted, “Didn’t General Remmele say something about a power?”
“Oh, yes. Totally forgot. Here.” She snapped her fingers, and energy swirled around her hand.
Alexandra’s eyes widened. “Fascinating.”
“That…do you know what that is?” Thea said.
“No, I’m stumped. Magic? Psychic powers? Something else?”
“Alexandra, your mother, Alex’s parents, and Olga Kirova were on X-Division. They investigated all sorts of weird and unexplained things. I need to know if they ever investigated something like this.”
“Now that I think about it…my mom had…certain abilities like this.”
Wilhelmina’s eyes widened. “She did?”
“I think so. When she died, I last saw her trying to bring down an entire tunnel on top of her just to kill an Argus squad that was pursuing me. She always told me she was capable of other feats years ago. But it’s weird, because she had to take a certain nootropic drug to activate those powers.”
Drugs? That was never my thing. No problem against it, but the image of a princess doing drugs would cause chaos. People are already mad over the kind of games I play anyways. Then again, cousin Willy really knew how to smoke a blunt in college, and nobody batted an eye even when he became next in line to the throne.
“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” Wilhelmina said.
“Weird. So what’s causing your power?”
“We’ll have to run some tests,” Thea said.
“I’d like to see exactly how far my power goes.”
“Would sure help us out in battle,” Gebhard said.
“I’ll set up a time when I’m next available,” Alexandra said.
“You guys should get some rest first,” Thea said.
“FINALLY!” Izinchi pumped her fists. “AYE, FLUFFY BEDS!”
Gebhard facepalmed. “I have no idea how this woman even became senator…”
“That makes two of us,” Leyla said.
“What’s a senator?” Gulichi said.
“Thanks, Alexandra,” Wilhelmina said, “It’s nice seeing you again.”
“Same here,” Alexandra said, “Glad to know you’re okay. You’re safe now.”
