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Looking back, Chester knew he should have anticipated that the Solar King would have some means of combating or neutralizing the neural gel. If anything, he should have become suspicious after he discovered that Smythe and the other saboteurs had implants to do just that. Although, even if he’d wanted to check for such a thing, how could he? No doctor in the core would ever dare to give the Solar King that invasive of an examination.

“Unless I controlled that doctor,” Chester mused, but on further consideration added, “The Solar King wouldn’t let me do that. He’d break free as soon as he saw the doctor.”

Only a day had passed since the attempted execution and not a moment went by that Chester didn’t feel the Solar King straining against his control. There were at least a dozen instances already when the Solar King was in control of himself for a few minutes at a time. True to his word, the Solar King hadn’t ordered Chester’s execution again and Chester had gone along with the Solar King’s instructions. The armies were amassing and preparing for their voyage to the fringe. Telescopes were scanning the vast stretches of space in search of the satellites and centrifugal accelerators. And all the while, the Solar King was placating the fringe leadership by continuing their negotiations. He didn’t accept their independence, but he was talking about making certain concession. Concessions which he would never actually honor once the leaders were dead and replaced.

“Replaced,” Chester said to himself as he walked through the royal gardens.

The lab was still being repaired so all of the necrologists were allowed some time off. Chester was using his time to think and he often found that he did his best thinking when walking the Solar King’s manicured grounds. Few people were allowed here so he wasn’t worried about being overheard. His habit of thinking out loud was one he knew could get him in trouble if the wrong people overheard him.

“Replaced,” he repeated, and this time he focused his thoughts towards the Solar King. “Why do they have to be replaced? Why does it have to be war? Isn’t the whole reason behind our research to avoid war?”

He waited for the Solar King to respond. Currently he was drafting the next series of responses to the fringe’s most recent communication.

“They’ve clearly figured out what you were working on,” was the reply. “Just look at your fellow necrologist, Smythe Hark. They know what to look for now. I would expect they even have a way to externally detect the presence of neural gel.”

“Then what use do you have for me?” It wasn’t the smartest thing to ask since it clearly gave the Solar King an excuse to reconsider executing Chester but he couldn’t help but ask it any way.

“It’s an arms race, Chester,” the Solar King stated. “They’ve figured out a few things and makes our current plans obsolete. Now you have to redesign your formulas so they can avoid detection. Make them more resistant to being neutralized as well.”

Chester already had the one neutralizing device, taken from Smythe’s head. He could study that to see how it works.

“The troubling thing,” the Solar King added, “is that they know anything about this at all. Necrology is supposed to be a closely guarded secret. Smythe Hark, however, came from the fringe already an expert. His time in the core studying necrology was just a front.”

That wasn’t a comforting thought. There had always been pockets of rogue necrologists, but never anything as sophisticated as what Chester and the other sanctioned necrologists could achieve. Or so they thought.

“Our own security needs to be heightened to begin scanning for neural gel in our people,” Chester said and felt the Solar King’s approval.

“I have already given that order,” he said.

“What about my personal security?” Chester asked, glancing back to the three people who trailed him to make sure he was safe. The three members of the security team that he’d captured during the Solar King’s attempt to execute him.

“Keep them,” the Solar King said, “for now. I will have you transfer their control over to me once I’ve fully shaken off my own shackles.”

It was a strange thing, being at times in complete control of the Solar King and then abruptly being reminded of how temporary that control was. He didn’t fully trust the Solar King regarding his own safety. He was quite certain that as soon as he was free, he would kill Chester. The only thing preventing him from trying again, Chester assumed, was how well Chester had thwarted him the first time. It wasn’t worth it to the Solar King to waste more resources when all he had to do was wait a little longer. Then there would be nothing Chester could do to protect himself.

He closed the connection between the Solar King and himself to make sure none of those thoughts leaked through to him.

“I have to get out of here,” he said.

But where to go? That was always the problem with being an official in the Solar King’s government. He could go most anywhere he wanted, but any travel would be recorded. His face, his genetic sequence, would be scanned at every turn. Anonymity was impossible.

With nothing he could do on that train of thought, he shifted instead to the problem with the neural gel. There was still too much autonomy. The subjects, while obedient, still retained too much of their own will, their own desires, and that inevitably clashed with the will of the one controlling them. On the one hand, allowing the subject to maintain their own consciousness meant they could follow instructions more independently. On the other hand, if the subject lacked their own self awareness, they would be easier to keep controlled but their behaviors would be harder to keep genuine since so much of their personality would need to come from the controller.

In that case, the subject would be more dead than alive, since then they’d truly be a puppet and not just forced to do what the controller wanted them to do. The controller would still have access to the drone’s memories and such, but couldn’t, for example, just tell them to do what they would normally do. Each choice, each action would have to be proscribed by the controller.

“Could that work on the Solar King?” he wondered aloud before catching himself. He was alone, but this was not the sort of thing you said out loud anywhere if you wanted to stay alive.

The real trick would be keeping the Solar King sufficiently under his control long enough to not only develop the new neural gel and subsequent process, but he’d also still need to put the Solar King through that process.

“I killed him once,” he muttered under his breath. “I just have to do it once more.”