The StarMaster’s Son
(Formerly The Master War)
Gibson Morales
Contents
About the Series
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
A Small Request
What’s Next in the Series?
Glossary
About Gibson Morales
About the InterBleeding Series
The InterBleeding Saga is an ongoing epic about a universe suffering from an interstellar bleeding by way of war, intergalactic strife, political corruption, shrinking resources, ancient threats, and more. Because the series features a massive universe, stories will include multiple perspective characters—some you may love, some you may loathe, and some you may laugh at—but the primary stories will usually revolve around Felik or Kai (assuming no tragic accidents). Currently, at least seven books are planned, but the series could easily go to ten books. Maybe fifteen or twenty. Who knows?
Stay Updated and Receive an InterBleeding Series Guide + Two Sci-Fi Novellas (The Red Queen and The Harvest Uprising) by Joining My Free Email Newsletter at www.gibsonmorales.com
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
—Aristotle
“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.”
—Socrates
Prologue
"Fuck my life." From his terrace, the StarMaster gazed out across the flowing copper clouds, then up at the ice rings of a faraway planet he'd never even bothered to name and sighed. A breeze flecked beads of moisture over a face that had seen far too much.
Chief Navigator Xerix smiled at him. "That's not very StarMasterly of you."
The StarMaster massaged his knuckles. "Neither is dying. But we all knew this was an experiment. And sometimes experiments don't end the way you want."
"It's not too late. You're right that this was an experiment. But there are others we could carry out. Experiments that might find a cure."
The StarMaster fixated on a cloud that vaguely resembled an old friend of his. He'd seen the greatest sights the universe had to offer. Supernovas, a flotilla of billions of ships, kaiju-sized human pyramids of fully naked women. Yet sometimes it was nice to look at the simpler beauties. "I've ruled for fifty solar cycles. That would be a pretty good reign for any man before the Ascendancy."
"It still is," Xerix beamed, tucking his hands behind his back. "You are, after all, the only StarMaster we've ever had. There's no one to compare you against yet."
"We'll see what Oberon says when fifty solar cycles have passed under his reign." The StarMaster inhaled deeply. Artificial bodies had rendered such a behavior unnecessary to sustain life, but old instincts died hard. Harder than he did anyway. "You still haven't confirmed that everything's been arranged."
Xerix frowned, though it was hard to notice on his face, as worn as an old sponge. "We can assume the protocols will choose Oberon as your successor."
"Assumptions. We've amassed all the power in the known universe and the best you can do is give me assumptions, huh?" His tone was more disbelieving than angry.
"If I'm not mistaken, you won the Great Cosmic Wars with assumptions."
There was a distant look in the StarMaster's eyes. "We probably should've learned from the Anunnaki on that one."
"Rest assured that Oberon has learned plenty from them."
"I wish I could merge my mind with his. Let him assimilate all my wisdom."
"And you could, if your core wasn't corrupted."
The StarMaster grimaced. "Do me one favor, Xerix. I don't want to be remembered as the ironic StarMaster."
"Please elaborate."
"I don't want people to joke about how despite humanity finally unlocking the keys to immortality and taking the stars, I missed out on it because we hadn't worked out the kinks yet. That would really be an annoying legacy."
"There is an easy solution."
"Oh good."
"You won't like it."
"I rescind my praise."
"You haven't heard what it is."
"You said I wouldn't like it."
"I assume you won't."
"You're not psionic, though, so you can't say for sure."
Xerix clapped his hands together. "The answer is simple. We inform the universe about all your secret little vices. No one will joke about you then."
The StarMaster laughed. "When I first met you, you were so dull I thought you might've been a first-gen Glenbot. Now look at you. Making the most powerful man in the universe laugh. One who's on the verge of death, no less. You have developed a sense of humor, my friend."
"I appreciate that. And what about yourself? What have you developed since you became StarMaster?"
"You're sure this isn't being live-streamed to the universe?"
"The ansible costs would be staggering."
"And here I thought the Phaetonians were the cheapskates. I've developed the same thing all great rulers do before they knowingly give up their power. Regrets. A lot of them."
"Should I cancel the rest of my meetings?"
"No need for that," the StarMaster said tiredly. "I can't mind meld with anyone. And that's the only real way to get other sapients to adopt your mindset. There's no point in me wasting my remaining sols dictating."
Xerix gave a curt nod. "We'll have to await your ghost's thoughts then to hear any of your wisdom."
The StarMaster smiled grimly. "What wisdom? We've got the keys to immortality and somehow I still managed to sentence myselves to death."
Chapter 1
<Go kill yourself, dumbass. That was the fakest sim I've ever seen.>
<Oh hey, an ad hominem argument. Great logic there!>
<You’re not a human, though. And why would the StarMaster let himself die?>
<THIS THOUGHT BUBBLE HAS BEEN DELETED.>
<Haha, good job getting banned.>
<If that sim was real, the StarMaster would've deleted it so quickly.>
<Maybe not. Half the sapients here don't even think it's real.>
<You're all speciests. You always blame the Phaetonians for these things.>
<Um, no one mentioned the Phaetonians except you...>
The virtual scholar realms that Felik knew and loved. The conversation got more heated, and he figured it best not to get involved. But he enjoyed lurking and reading the thought bubbles. He didn't know if the sim about the StarMaster dying was real or fake. Probably fake. But it was fun to imagine it being real. Well, not fun, but intriguing. Enthralling in a sadistic, chaotic-loving so
rt of way.
As usual, countless sim remixes had come out, in which a single variable was tweaked for comical purposes. In one, the StarMaster and his Chief Navigator's voices were extremely high-pitched and squirrelly. Another played silly, light-hearted music in the background. One featured the physically ape-like G'hajupan crawling around the StarMaster and Chief Navigator and smearing feces over them.
The scholar realms construct appeared as thousands of white motes linked together set inside an expansive black chamber. The larger the mote, the more popular the idea contained within. In this area, each mote cluster focused on a different piece of news. Thousands upon thousands of transparent forms of other scholars wisped around in streams, appearing as nondescript humanoids.
He scanned each mote in turn until he found another that interested him.
Apparently, the realms had banned a niche network known as the Extinct. The Extinct network was a collection of self-defeatist debtors who griped that they were incapable of ever escaping the Karma Nebula Pact. According to the Pact, you earned karma (and karma bits) for deeds judged positively by other sapients. You traded portions of your karma to others in exchange for services and goods.
The Extinct were trapped in that system, as they could only gain karma by renting out their minds to others. The karma bits they accrued from that were extracted from them to pay off their debts. That left them with no bits to pay for basic living items, putting them into more debt. Getting banned from the realms had earned them negative karma, which also put them into more debt.
Felik pitied the Extinct. Their ugly reality was but one of many that had persisted despite everything humanity had achieved since the Great Cosmic Wars.
Next to him, a scholar avatar lost its transparency. Someone was messaging him directly. His nexus recognized the user and tagged him as <Landi>.
The avatar transformed from a generic humanoid shape to Landi's actual form, a Telchine. The hermaphroditic creature resembled a giant starfish with an array of tiny tentacles across its body and randomly opening and closing gills.
<Something big is going down,> Landi messaged him.
<Something big is always going down, somewhere in the universe,> Felik replied. <Let me guess, you think that sim of the StarMaster is real?>
<Can you debunk it?>
<A lot of experts are saying it's fake.>
<Many experts are saying it's real.>
<Most of those experts are using amateur analysis methods.>
<And who gets to decide that they are amateur methods?> In addition to words, messages could also carry tones, bursts of emotion, and physical motions. Landi's often expressed a contrarian, almost condescending mood.
<Professional sim designers.>
Felik threw up his hands. <You've got an answer for everything, don't you?>
His attention drifted. He didn't see why the realms would ban the Extinct network. Their ideas were depressing but not dangerous. Less an ideology than a narrative. More of a support group than a cult.
Curious, Felik launched directly through the ghost-forms of other realm users to the mote at the center of the cluster. A quick parsing and he understood. Allegedly, the Extinct network's discussions had verged on aggressive actions. Some of them had suggested they band the computing powers of their collective cores together and psi.hack their way to freedom.
He juggled his satisfaction of the Extinct receiving attention with disappointment over the general response. The other realm users had a lot of opinions, of course. The ones that dominated were disgust and disregard.
He chimed in and offered his opinion under a fake user ID. <Maybe some of the Extinct are cutting themselves short. But a lot are truly trapped. I've been trapped like them. Sometimes there's nothing you can do.>
Unlike the Extinct, he'd been trapped because of his nobility, not for a lack of it.
The responses came quick, <Hey look it's an Extinct.>
<You're supposed to be banned you wannabe psi.hacker.>
<Do us a favor and go extinct already.>
If only he could let them see things from his perspective, from the Extinct network's perspective, and foster an understanding. But he couldn't do that as some random user. Or even as a scion of the StarMaster.
Landi dragged him back into their debate. <Speaking of answers, you never replied to my rebuttal last time.>
Felik's chin fell. He was trapped here, too. <I got busy with work.>
<It's a shame you can't buy a deception mod. Maybe then you'd have a decent shot of tricking me.>
Of course, deceiving Landi would be an accomplishment in itself. Occasionally a hacker, the Telchine specialized in decrypting secure data nodes and mining data block-chains. And he also had ways of detecting a sapient's usage of a module. But Felik's neural virus prevented him from using any mods.
<Fine. You caught me. I couldn't think of a counterargument.> Felik shrugged as the other realm users swarmed from mote to mote, completely oblivious to their conversation.
<Then do you concede I was right?>
<Yeah, you made a fair point,> Felik grumbled.
<That's very rational of you. Now, will you hear out my current findings?>
<Something big is coming...>
<If you don't believe me, we could bet on it. Two hundred karma bits if you win.>
Felik weighed that against the risk of losing. Because Landi always asked for the same thing. Not money. Just that Felik share his discoveries with other members of his governmental division, his mind. He'd learned the hard way that most sapients didn't want to hear "the truth." Not from a guy with a neural virus.
How to put it diplomatically? <I'm not saying nothing will happen, but so what?>
<This time it's big. I've been running my core as part of the Free Minds decrypting team. We will be releasing information publicly in short order. I thought I would inform you, though, as a personal favor.>
Felik narrowed his eyes. The Free Minds was an autonomous digital virus built of a collective of much smaller, specialized viruses, ever-changing and adapting to avoid deletion or counter-viruses. Each had evolved to hack into Union Omega government minds and release important messages and financial data. The catch was that it released them on the InfiNet as encrypted data blocks. That's where teams like Landi's came in to comb through them and cipher out their data—just making it encrypted created a frenzy to unlock them, which in turn attracted even more curiosity.
<It's about Starkeeper Oberon,> Landi said.
<You truly hate him, don't you?> Landi's team had a funny habit of cracking data blocks right after Megas said something crazy. Megas, another of the StarMaster's scions and technically one of Felik's many brothers, had never been one to shy away from the InfiNet. Over the last solar cycle, he'd claimed that the StarMaster, Oberon, and members of the Watchers network were part of a universal conspiracy to integrate everyone into one big hive mind. And that Oberon was a key player in the illegal sapient core trade.
<I just prefer to keep my own mind independent.>
<Alright, alright. Send me what you've got,> Felik sent with a tinge of regret. He used to hang out on the scholar realms for reviews of the latest gambling sims, updates on feasible cures for his chronic but non-contagious neural virus, and occasional philosophical and political debates. Lately, the latter dominated the scholar realms, oozing even into seemingly neutral topics, like comparisons of ship classes.
A data node appeared in his feed, and he parsed it. It was, to be sure, hardly flattering, but not the smoking gun he'd assumed. The messages, intended only for Oberon or his allies, were mostly a collection of undermining instances.
In one, Xerix admitted to another ally that Oberon had "terrible instincts." In another, Oberon scolded the G'hajupan for allowing their intergalactic neighbors, the Fluk-Scoyfol, to construct a series of wormhole research facilities, hinting that
the Union Omega would have to send in a small fleet of warships as a precaution.
<You are not infuriated by these?> Landi asked.
<I'm sorry, but these aren't evidence of Oberon selling sapients' cores or trying to integrate everyone into a hive mind.>
<Where there's one, there are many.>
<You have more?> Felik asked.
<We will. Better ones, too.>
Landi's team and many others had released batches of these types of revelations. Each time, Oberon's karma took a hit, but nothing crippling to his status as a starkeeper—one of the thousands of political representatives of the universe's sapients.
<I hope you will factor these into your opinion, for your hope of becoming the Chief Philosopher.>
The mention of the position Felik coveted took him aback. <Why would it affect that?>
<Centuries ago, when the Anunnaki were helping the Old Terrans develop AI, a meme known as 'Roko's Basilisk' arose. It is the idea that a very high-level sophont AI, such as a Matrioshka brain, would punish anyone who didn't help bring about its existence even if they only knew about its possible existence and didn't act to help develop it further. Even knowledge of this meme itself without action would prove enough to punish the sapient.>
Felik frowned. <So you're saying just by you exposing me to this idea, I'd be at risk of punishment by the hypothetical AI?>