(Photo by cottonbro studio)

The lab was, once again, empty. Tamara had left over an hour ago. She was handling the Solar King now and Chester was monitoring both their actions. He felt sick over what he’d nearly done to Tamara. What sort of person was he? Even knowing what the Solar King was planning to do with this procedure, Chester had never pictured it in detail. Faceless enemies, political rivals, and so forth were all Chester ever imagined.

“It’s the Solar King,” Chester muttered. “I’m spending too much time trying to think like he does.”

It was a convenient lie he told himself. One that he almost believed. Inevitably, however, he knew he was the only one responsible for his actions. He was the one holding the puppet’s strings.

Without any further preamble, he began cleaning up the lab. The experimental neural gel he’d created went back into its jar on the shelf. Perhaps he’d test it out on one of the criminals slated for execution.

It wasn’t a long list of things that needed to be done. He’d only needed about half of the usual apparatus so before much longer he was out of the lab and strolling down the hallway. The necrology lab was incorporated fully into the massive compound that housed every part of the Solar King’s government, being one of the few non-administrative departments. Since the Solar King never slept, neither did his government. People rotated out in shifts to ensure there was always someone keeping things running smoothly. As such, the hallways were just as busy and alive with people in the middle of the night as they were during the day. Only the faces changed.

Chester nodded to them as he passed by, noting the markings on their uniforms to see which part of the government they worked in. He had similar markings on his own uniform, of course, revealing to anyone who cared to notice that he was the Solar King’s chief necrologist. Most people who did notice immediately looked away. A few tried to give him a smile. No one ever spoke to him.

Even though necrology was a well known tool in the Solar King’s arsenal, it wasn’t a very well understood one. The only thing most people did know about it was that it was how the Solar King had built his first army, the one that had conquered the solar system in the first place. Chester was well aware of the stories people told about the necrologists and what they could do. Most of it was outlandish speculation, some of it was close to the mark, and the rest was where Chester and the Solar King got some of their ideas for new experiments.

Even with all the people constantly about, it felt calm and quiet to Chester. He liked that. No one was running scared here. There were no sounds of fighting, not even a raised voice. The air was clear and free of smoke or noxious fumes. He could get food in any number of ways and trust it to be safe.

“That’s what the fringe is missing,” Smythe Hark said.

Smythe was in his own home, no where near Chester, yet still he heard Smythe’s words. He hadn’t meant to project his thoughts over to mister Hark. Another unintended consequence of the process, or perhaps just a result of his tired mind.

“All the people on the fringe want the same things you do,” Smythe said.

I‘m doing what I can, Chester thought and knew that Smythe would hear him.

“You could be doing more.”

No, I can‘t. The Solar King‘s advisors would notice!

“What if you controlled them too?”

Chester stopped dead in his tracks.

“You can’t be serious?” he said out loud.

A few people glanced at him, but conversations over a neural uplink were common enough that they all quickly returned to whatever they were doing before Chester’s outburst.

“Why not?” Smythe asked.

There‘s dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe.

“So? There’s just as many leaders in the fringe that the Solar King was planning on using this process on.”

I can‘t manage that many people.

“Then find a solution to that problem.”

Smythe didn’t know everything Chester knew, so there was no way he could know that Chester had already begun work on just such a solution. He’d almost implemented it that very day on Tamara. With a few weeks of testing, Chester could ensure the process worked, and then he could begin having the Solar King’s advisors processed, ensuring he had enough intermediary minds to share the workload. It could work…as long as no one figured out what was going on. All it would take was one suspicious advisor to sneak in a necroscanner to pick up the presence of the neural gel. It wasn’t a concern out on the fringe since that kind of technology was exceedingly rare, but here in the core? Chester wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more paranoid advisors had standing orders for them to be scanned on a regular basis just in case.

Personal protection in the Solar King’s court was a serious thing and not to be taken lightly. If the other rulers thought the Solar King was targeting them, they’d unite in a revolt and overthrow the Solar King. Even if they couldn’t kill him, they could still imprison him. Of course, the worst case scenario would be for them to realize that the Solar King himself had been made into a puppet. That would lead them straight to Chester and, well, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out how that would go.

If Chester was really going to do this and completely take over the empire, a ridiculous notion when he stopped to think about it, then he would need to process the advisors all at once, or at least in as short a span of time as possible. Their families and staff might also need to be processed depending on how tight their personal security measures were. That would require a processing facility much larger than the solitary lab Chester currently worked in. He’d also need to find a way to get all of the advisors together at the same time without raising suspicions.

Chester let those thoughts and worries float about in his mind while he continued on his way home. He wasn’t convinced yet that this was the right thing for him to do. He might still do nothing and just let the situation in the fringe carry on with just his minor nudges to make improvements. Smythe was the one who was anxious to see some real changes happen.

The rest of the evening went by in a haze. It wasn’t until he was lying down in bed that he was finally able to clear his thoughts. He hadn’t come to any grand decisions but those could all wait. Now it was time to sleep and he’d long since learned how to quiet his thoughts and sleep deeply. He’d worry about all of this tomorrow. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Chester never remembered his dreams. It was something he was quite grateful for since, considering the things he’d seen and lived through, he doubted he’d like whatever his subconscious could put together for him. He knew that he did dream, since everyone dreamed, but he made a point of waking up quickly and getting right into his daily routine to avoid risking any dreams being remembered. He was also a sound sleeper and could sleep through most mundane noises. There were, however, a few sounds that instantly awoke him no matter how deeply asleep he was.

It was still the middle of the night when Chester’s eyes opened and he found himself wide awake. In the distance, barely audible, was a low rumble and he felt his bad shake ever so slightly.

“That was an explosion,” he said to himself.

He tapped into the Solar King’s neural uplink at once.

Messages were arriving and he could sense Tamara as she tried to filter it all for the Solar King.

“I’ll take it from here,” he said, projecting his words to Tamara.

He felt her relief as she ceded full control over to him.

Reports of explosions were coming in from all over the world. This was a coordinated strike. The explosions mainly hit infrastructure with minimal casualties. Power relays, manufacturing facilities, and the like. Local authorities were already searching for the saboteurs but it was too soon to expect anyone to have been caught yet.

Something in the back of Chester’s mind was nagging at him. Something he’d wondered about for the last few days but hadn’t acted on. Now, he shifted his focus away from the Solar King and instead woke up Smythe Hark.

What do you know about this?

Chester felt Smythe smile.

“Everything,” he said in his empty bedroom.

Immediately, Chester began to receive all of Smythe’s knowledge regarding this plot. The explosions were only the beginning.