THE ARGUS PROJECT
While Argus was performing microsurgery on himself, the Kansler in his own quarters was being dressed up in his finest parade uniform.
Fitted with every medal and insignia the Fleet could produce, the white uniform was quite heavy on his shoulders, even in the low artificial gravity.
Again the Kansler dreamed of power, and now he felt confident of ultimate success. The Argus-A prototype had proved that the transformation process did work, that a man's identity survived the grueling process.
Already the Kansler was reconsidering his recent murder of Boulder Pi, and thought it a wise move after all; the little engineer had had to be eliminated anyway, to ensure stricter control of the cyborg-making process.
Not long now, he thought to himself. Not long before I am made immortal, and then my dream comes true.
The Kansler sat down as a robot polished his boots, and he imagined himself as the last in that long lineage of powerful men (and, he grudgingly admitted, one woman) who forced mankind toward greatness and conquest.
He dreamed of the mists of prehistory when some tribal chieftain, armed with no more than a spear and his strength, began to conquer all other tribes in the region. From there he dreamed onward through history, until the invention of writing made the names and origins known to posterity.
The Greek-Macedonian Alexander the Great, the Roman-Italian Julius Caesar, the Mongolian Genghis Khan, a long line of Aztec rulers whose names were lost when their alphabet went extinct, the Crusader kings of Medieval Europe, the French Charlemagne, the British Henry V, the Spanish Fernando Cortez and the Conquistadors, the Russian Ivan the Terrible, the French-Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte, the Austrian-German Adolf Hitler, the Georgian-Russian Josef Stalin, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, the Belo-Russian Vlad Drakovin, the Pan-European Wings Mason, the Pan-American Rosario Mortales, the Pan-African Papa Shaka, the Pan-Asian Pol-Khan - and the Terran Kansler, last and greatest of them all.
It seemed to him almost as if conquerors were a special breed, apart from Homo Sapiens - or they were all the same mind, jumping from body to body, from century to century.
Soon, he mused, he could put his personal past behind him, and become what he had always wanted to be - a god. He would erase historical records, so that history began and ended with him.
Of course, sacrifices had to be made on the path to godhood, but hadn't things always been that way? A few million, or billion, subjects lost here and there meant little in the greater scheme of things.
And then he intended to reshape and guide humanity to the stars and even greater conquest. Maybe there were other life forms out there, with similar ambitions? Then the great challenge to defeat and eliminate them would be so much more delightful... a conquest infinite and eternal, enough to sate the Kansler's appetite.
The robot finished his boots, and he leaned forward to catch his reflection in the polished leather.
He saw - a middle-aged man with acne-scars on his chin, bags under his eyes that the facial paint did little to hide... and a mouth stretched so habitually into a charming smile, it seemed a foreign organism merely living on his face. The left eyeball was more bloodshot than the right one, from overexposure to laser-projections and the miniscreen-patch.
He found it difficult to keep both eyes in focus. Oh well - the broadcast controlroom would edit out the veins from his left eye, as usual...
A headache flared up from his shifting eye-focus, and an unfamiliar insight occurred to him. Even through all this imagined endless conquest, and the dream of his transformed immortal body, one thing remained the same: he himself.
His limitless drive to dominate was all-consuming, pushing aside any consideration of an average life. Family, love, simple pleasures, friendship, looking back on memories in the autumn years, seeing one's offspring find its own way... none of these mundane things were allowed to interfere with the Kansler's dream.
I had a wife and child at some point in time... what did they look like again?
Unchanging, he would keep looking forward, chasing some dreamed-of absolute victory in a future always out of reach... never able to stop and declare: Enough. I can rest. His dream that pushed him always onward might be a kind of...
But the threatening insight was pushed away by the stronger, dominating will to power. He willfully forgot what he had just been thinking. No more did he question the meaning of his ambition: it existed, and must therefore be obeyed.
The Kansler stood up and adjusted his old uniform cap. Another small robot, hanging from the padded ceiling, coated the cap with white paint to match the uniform.
"I am ready," he told the staff. "Call for a general assembly. Argus is to arrive last."
***
The assembly hall filled up with crew and officers, the brass band played One Earth, roving cameras flew back and forth, the best mood drugs were taken on strict orders from the Kansler himself.
No one would be able to step out of line. After a slight delay entered the Kansler, accompanied by his personal guard droids.
The doors shut behind him, and a minute later reopened to let in Argus. He walked in with regular, calm steps, also flanked by guard droids.
The Kansler studied the row of crewmen, drugged into bliss, and made a speech to the cameras. It was fifteen minutes long, full of clichés about honor, patriotism and sacrifice. Argus wanted to shut him up, but he waited.
Finally, the Kansler walked up to Argus, and presented the medal.
A fanfare played; a floating screen-prompt hovered in a far corner, showing him his scripted lines and movements.
Argus opened his mouth to shout -
41: Kansler!
(NEXT CHAPTER)
THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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