GENETIC WARs 2077
The Killing Moves
Jonathan S. Coolidge

	“It is my hope that I would live to see these things come to pass,” Xau replied to Michelle as the two sat outside at a café in the renovated, upscale northern portion of the Bronx.  The electric hum of crowds of cars passing by on the adjacent road filled the air, accompanied by other city noises, reflecting off nearby buildings.  “I’d like to think that some day out-of-body travel may be accepted as a part of science.”
	“You’re a great mind,” Michelle answered.  “Right now, the New Technology is offering the potential for immortality.  Consider Ipanema.”
	“Yes, I tried to convince Scott to accept the offer, but he refused to have his brain patterns archived, instead passing it on to his sister, who was at the time in her nineties.  Now she’s a five year old horseback trainer and the youngest member of the Equine breed genome project.  I keep trying to convince Scott and Elodea that they are of too great historic significance to be lost.  But, he keeps talking about trying to find a successor—someone to carry on the LGFF after he’s gone.  He’s been pushing me for the position.”
	“But, what about you?  Have you been archived yet?”
	“It hardly seems right—to give immortality to friends and relatives—something so arbitrary, when thousands of people die every day.  Yes, this mind-archival technology is imperfect—experimental.  But, the potential to live forever—I may not be from this world, but I can appreciate for myself how much of a quest it has been for humanity to achieve such a thing.  For me, I will be satisfied enough to live through today….”  A loud gunshot interrupted his train of thought.  Then, as one of the cars sped away, forcing its way through traffic, Xau Zolan dropped forward, limp.

	By the time the Emergency Medical Services arrived, an automatic defibrillator device in a neighboring chiropractor’s office had emailed the ambulance his vital signs, including a stable heart rhythm.  None-the-less, his breathing was becoming increasingly shallow.  This sign was doubly troublesome given that their patient was lycanthropy-positive, given lycanthropes’ increased need for oxygen as well as their usual resilience.  He had shifted somewhat, revealing some lupine features.  However, as the EMTs were quick to comment, it would have been even more ominous if he had stayed in human form—the form in which lycanthropes usually revert when dying.
	The trip was brief and frantic to the nearest level one trauma center, an older hospital built during a time when such violence was once common in the Bronx.  In spite of their historic building, their emergency department was stuffed with the latest electronics and biotechnology, designed to preserve brain function in spite of impossible odds.  Thankfully to modern electronic communication networking, the transition from ambulance to Emergency Department was brief.  The chief physician met the unconscious Xau as a team of people rolled him in.  He listened for a few moments with his stethoscope, confirming his fears.
	“I’ll need a size six chest tube; he’s got a right-sided pneumothorax.”
	“He’s hemodynamically stable,” one of the EMTs interjected.
“This man may need a chest surgeon!” the physician continued.  As the staff briefly halted their flurry of activity and stood back, a ring-shaped portable X-ray device was pushed over his upper body and pulled back.  Moments later, the physician and two concerned nurses gazed at a black-and-white series of images appearing on a cluster of monitors.
“There’s the bullet,” the ER physician commented, pointing at his observations.  “it missed both the heart and the great vessels, but it cut across the right lower lobe, deflecting off the eighth rib and lodging in T9—awfully close to the spinal cord.”

“Not everyday you get a jacked-up case like this,” the large-framed, dark-skinned physician thought out loud.  Less than thirty minutes later, Dr. Pitts and her surgical team were already driving a flexible scope into Xau’s chest wall, while a monitor nearby displayed Xau’s injured lung and anterior vertebral column.  “I’d love to get my hands on the asshole who did this job.”
“And this man is Xau Zolan, one of the Cozaliens who helped the abductees destroy the dreadnaught,” the scrub tech added, her own lycanthropy evidenced by amber eyes and tufts of fur visible above her facial mask.  “He also helped save the Prometheus last year.  This man’s a hero to humanity.”
“No pressure,” Dr. Pitts replied, focusing the scope on a metallic object imbedded in a raised ridge of bone behind Xau’s heart.  “Lord, I’ve had a great track record so far.  Don’t you dare let me screw this one up!”  As she held the scope in position, she motioned to the scrub tech with her hand.  “Gripper.”
The technician started to hand a long, narrow clamping tool to the surgeon when she paused briefly, her features shifting as she gasped.  Her ears twitched underneath her surgical cap, and she almost dropped the instrument before collecting herself.  Then she passed the device into Pitts’ awaiting glove.
“Stay with me,” Dr. Pitts replied, noticing her assistant’s pallor.  She then reached the device into the chest opening until its grasper tip appeared on the scope.
“It’s nothing,” the tech replied, still occasionally glancing away from the operating field and the monitor, looking upwards, towards the overhead lights.

Xau watched with great interest as the tech looked back towards him.  Apparently her lycanthropic senses were strong enough to sense a spirit outside of its body.
“I’ve got it,” Dr. Pitts stated after several gripping attempts.  She slowly backed the instrument handle away from the field of blood and blue drapes, revealing the device’s shaft and then its gripper tip, holding onto a small, misshapen metallic object.  With a small clank, she dropped the object into a metal pan and looked at it closely.  “I’m sure forensics will love this.  It’s a silver bullet.”  By 2077, people were well aware that lycanthropes had no special vulnerability to silver and could be killed by other means.  However, a number of fanatic lycanthrophobics had taken to using silver bullets as a murder weapon of choice, to conjure up images of old movies of the werewolf monster.
“That makes this a hate crime,” the anesthesiologist muttered as he adjusted the flow rate of gases.
“Well,” Dr. Pitts replied, “generally when someone shoots you, the hate part’s a given.”  She inserted one last instrument, which began emitting a tone as it cauterized a slowly spurting blood vessel.  “As soon as I’m done patching a few leaks, we’ll close up.”
Xau Zolan was a seasoned astral projector, and he did not feel that his current out-of-body experience was near-death so much as a reflex action.  He felt confident that the surgical team would repair his body, and that at some point all would be well again.  Then Xau began to doubt this optimism as he felt a jolt pulling him back into his body.

“You managed to convince the anesthesiologist that his brainwave monitor was broken,” Anderson Conus commented, walking into a VIP private room.  As he set a small bouquet onto a nearby table, Xau groaned and attempted to sit up, finally resorting to pushing a few buttons on a remote control, raising the bed automatically.
“You can reassure him I was in no pain during the entire procedure.”  Xau’s still somewhat lupine ears twitched as he moved about.  “Now, however, is a different story.”
Conus sat at the edge of the bed, exhibiting both personal and professional concern for his associate.  “What’s the news?”
“Right now I’m paralyzed from the waist down,” Xau replied, his animalistic face relatively flat of emotion, but his British accent remained.  “But, between my lycanthropic tissue regeneration and current stem cell implantation procedures at the Christopher Reeve Center, they feel I have a good chance of walking again in a few months.”
“I’ll have my people look into it, too.  We’ve been, with some reluctance, looking at the files on Cozalien medical and engineering experiments, but it’s been such a hot topic politically that we’ve been afraid to do anything with it.  But, if there’s a chance that I can get my best engineer back in working order, I’ll risk the heat.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to ignore the ramifications,” Xau replied, shifting his features more to that of a man with shoulder-length blond hair.  His eyes changed from an icy pale blue to a warmer, almost gray color.  “Cozalien biomedical science has traumatized an entire generation.  Seeing a Cozalien-born therian recover through conventional, Earthly methods might help humanity accept our kind a little better.”
“Humanity has already accepted your kind….” Conus responded, then pausing for a moment, remembering how Xau ended up hospitalized in the first place.  “… with a few radical exceptions—I’m afraid that’s always been a weakness of our species.”  Conus conspicuously shifted his tone, endeavoring to redirect the conversation’s emphasis.  “Worst case scenario, I’ve been studying the brain implants that some Cozalien therians used, to network their consciousness with Four One and the crystalline CZ-organisms…”  As Conus started to explain, however, Xau bent forward, sniffing at him conspicuously and then gripping his arm.  Conus rolled up his sleeve, revealing a series of puncture wounds, with large tracts of dark blood vessels covering his arm, and a small tufts of soft black feathers.  Conus looked back without concern.  “My were-form will resemble a great hawk.  I’m looking forward to growing my wings.”
“How did Elaine take the news.”
“Oh, I’ll need to tell her.”  Conus paused, showing signs of growing awareness that again he had blundered in his personal relationships.  He and his wife had growing tension between them, even as his position in the international business arena and in scientific research grew in prominence.  Over the last year, Technical Research Industries had merged with the STAR Corporation to form TRI-STAR, and Conus’ research on reverse-engineering Cozalien technology had become a priority field of research.  At the same time, however, his wife Elaine complained openly to him how uncomfortable she was with his work on board a modified Cozalien entity.  TRI-STAR’s flagship project was Conus One, a crystalline alien entity converted into a research spacecraft.  In its original form, it was a battleship responsible for destroying several Earth defense ships and killing thousands of human soldiers.  Elaine was afraid it would remember its original purpose, and was only temporarily won over last year when the entity rescued a sabotaged space colonization vessel before it could crash into New York City.  Even as public opinion gradually shifted away from the horrors of the Cozaliens during the 2065 invasion, Elaine continued to dwell on it more and more, and she clung to their son Alexander with increasing vigilance.  “Maybe becoming therian will help me understand people better.”
“Perhaps,” Xau answered, “but I don’t think it will help you with Elaine.”
“It’s ironic; you were born more than ten light years away from here, genetically engineered by aliens, and yet you have a better understanding of my own wife than I do.”
“You do remember that therianthropic viruses can be spread by sexual contact,” Xau added.  “Not intending to intrude into your personal affairs, but Elaine is probably not going to allow herself to be exposed.”
“That’s not going to be a major problem,” Conus replied remorsefully.  “We haven’t slept together in months.”

As Xau guided his wheelchair, gripping and directing the wheels with his hands, the leopardess Michelle walked along side him.  “Rather than a modern chair, I chose to go with one of these old-style hand-powered ones.  It keeps me down here well below eye level, but when I’m in wolf form, this is about my usual height.”  Xau added, “I can walk just fine when I’m out-of-body.  Getting around in the real world is going to take a little more time.”
“I’ve been working with the police, and they’ve gotten several suspects,” Michelle tried to offer.
Xau stopped and turned towards her with solid confidence.  “I’ve chosen to move beyond anger.  That would only get in the way.  The best revenge is to walk again, to stand in defiance.  I’m going to do that; my physical therapist is in total agreement with me, and under his advice I have already visualized my standing up on the control deck of Conus One again.  Better than that, I should visualize running as wolf through the forest—real forests, not the mythical ones of the astral plane.”
After several moments of silence as the two strolled through the lush courtyard, Michelle then inquired, “How up are you on the news?”
“As you can imagine, I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”
“Warlord Emily just committed suicide.”  As Michelle spoke, Xau stopped again.  He started to ask what circumstances brought this event about, but Michelle answered first.  “Shann Enterprises insist that it was problems with her personal life, but they’ve had to hold production of any more of the Warlord line.”
“I’m sorry; I realize she was an acquaintance of yours.”
“It’s more than that.  You’re a therianthrope, but you’re still genetically considered human.  Her death is a blow to all of us who are something other than human.  It’s not enough that she had broken dreams and inner turmoil.  Her death has now become another argument to shut down genetic engineering and banish us to extinction.”  She knelt down beside him, to meet with eyes.  “Thomas Shann made a rather convincing speech defending Warlords and other engineereds as people, saying that her depression was proof of  our emotion and feeling rather than as a design flaw.  Gardener and Taylor not surprisingly came to our defense as well.  Gary’s all too happy with his life as star of that stupid reality show Genetic Wars.  The three younger kids aren’t showing any signs of any problems.  There’s the matter of the bootleg Warlord, who still has yet to be found; he’s obviously got issues….  It just doesn’t help that Shann Enterprises had to name them ‘Warlords.’  They could have named them something less intimidating.”
“Changing the name would help only little,” Xau offered, “and I doubt Gary or the producers of Genetic Wars would accept it without a fight.  What needs to happen is for more of your kind to be like you, to come out in the open, living among people rather than in the sheltered life of those like Gary.”
“Emma tried that; she wanted to go into theater.  Who she was just simply couldn’t get past what she was.”

“Xau, I don’t know about this,” the therapist Jessica warned.  The others looked at her, unaccustomed to her showing any reluctance towards pushing her patients towards recovery.  However, Xau’s ambition was phenomenal as he grabbed the pair of rails, tugging himself out of his wheelchair.  He gritted his teeth and quivered as he tried to stand upright, white fur erupting from his skin.  He tried to hold back his lycanthropic transformation, as the pain to his back and chest ripped through him.  Then, he stumbled and fell, hitting the ground.
“Xau!”  Jessica shouted, shaking the creature before her.  He appeared limp, with a blank stare to his icy blue eyes.  Then, he became responsive again, shifting closer to a human form.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.  “I went out-of-body again.”
“I won’t pretend to understand this astral projection business,” Jessica answered with resignation.  “I’ve worked with lycanthropes before, but there are things about you I’m not sure I can ever really figure out.  But, I do know that your body needs you right now—try to stay in it.”

Xau Zolan made his way through ethereal foliage, his four feet darting across ghostly soil.  He was swift and agile, strong and free.  Then, he came upon a stream.  As he bent down to drink from the stream, he could see his lupine reflection, and beyond the scintillating colors of the astral plane.  He paused for a moment and turned around, a thin, wisp-like silver cord appearing behind his head, pointing to a point of light that opened up, leading back into a dim hospital room, where his body lied in bed.
Xau opened his eyes, feeling a twinge of pain as he reoriented himself with his body in human form.  He pushed himself up, looking around.  Though he appeared human, he was still at heart something else, and his lupine sense of smell sensed a familiar presence approaching.  A knock on his door greeted him.  “Enter,” he replied, lifting his somewhat fur-covered feet over the side of the bed.
“Good evening,” Scott Gardener said, walking into the room, the gray-haired old wolf in human form inspecting the surroundings.  His attire was formal, in keeping with his prominent role as leader of the Lycanthrope Global Freedom Federation.  His mate Elodea came in with him, carrying a bouquet of flowers.  Though she was in her mid-seventies biologically and through Einstein’s relativity over two hundred, she still appeared full of vitality and continued to wear the outlandish, costume-like attire for which she had become notorious.
“I’ve sneaked in a nail file,” she commented with a mischievous grin.  “Of course, it would be better to see you walking out.”
“I’ve been doing it,” Xau answered with a confession.  “But, my therapist says I need to stay inside my body for awhile.  It’s hard to do when you consider just how peaceful the astral realm is, and just how cruel this world is…  Not that I’m giving up, but I do find myself having to work to keep from slipping out.”
“As long as you can get back in,” Elodea answered.
“I used to do something similar,” Scott added.  “A long time ago, I was a terrible daydreamer.  I’d spend whole afternoons hanging out with my old friends Tim and Selena, playing role-playing games—not really games so much as shared fantasy stories.  I’ve never stopped daydreaming, either.  But, things certainly changed for me when Elodea came along.”  He referred to the now well-known fact that his lifetime mate Elodea had first appeared to him in hybrid wolf form, afflicting him with lycanthropy back in a time when werewolves were thought to be nothing more than fiction.
Then Scott redirected his focus.  “I do not mean to detract from your therapy by encouraging any more astral wanderings, but I will admit an underlying motivation for this visit.  I’d like to hire you as a remote viewer.”
“Given that I’ve had to take a leave of absence from my day job,” Xau answered, “I’ll be happy to.  This sounds like something official—something confidential.”
“Ever play chess?”  Scott’s reply implied without outright confirming Xau’s suspicions.  “I learned to play it as a child, but I got good playing against my anonymous benefactors when I was a captive research subject.  I used to beat Thomas Shann almost half of the time.  But…”  Scott paused, giving Xau a chance to respond.
“You’re looking for a spy to help you cheat at chess?”
“I want to know why I haven’t won a single game against him in five years.  I’ve played against him plenty of times—never face-to-face, but we’ve had ongoing games online.  Statistically I should have won at least a few.  I’ve lost every single one.  It’s like playing against a master program.”
“And,” Elodea added, “he has this annoying tendancy to ask if you want to surrender, right before he starts the moves that kills you.  When Thomas asks you if you want to surrender, that’s when you know you’re doomed, even if it looks like you’re winning.”
“You’re pretty egotistical,” Xau answered, “but not enough for this just to be about chess.”
“Yes, and no.  It depends on whether you define chess as a game played on sixty-four squares, or as something larger.  Thomas Shann isn’t just better at chess.  He’s also obviously younger, by some artificial means.  The man is in his late eighties, but he actually looks younger than he did a decade ago.  The New Technology is still being explored, and one of the hottest fields of research involve Cozalien brain implants, like the ones that Conus is dabbling with.”
“We’ve also heard rumors,” Elodea continued for Scott, “of an underground project of Shann’s, code-named ‘Cy-Brain,’ involving the mapping of neurons onto an artificial organic electronic matrix.  We’re wondering if this could have anything to do with either Shann’s apparent immortality or his insurmountable chess skills.”
“Either way,” Gardener finished, “we could use any intellegence you have to offer.  I know you’re needing some recovery time here in real space-time, but the L.G.F.F. could really use your services.”
Xau answered, “It’s OK.  I still have to sleep at night, and early morning is my peak time for astral travel.  Conveniently, it will be evening in Bagdhad.”

As Xau drifted awake from dreaming of running through crystalline forests, he remembered his injuries, and of the burning pain ripping through his chest.  Then, he remembered his need to face the pain and regain his legs.  He remembered that he had to avoid the temptation to drift off to the astral realm.  But, then he remembered that he did reserve for himself an agenda.
He focused on the elaborate cityscape of Bagdhad, home of Thomas Shann and Shann Enterprises.  He fixed in his mind its more prominent skyline elements, of old mosques next to modern skyrises, of broken, dismembered statues of a fallen dictator at the turn of the millennium, to the great technological complex of Shann’s corporate headquarters.
He walked down the corridors of the downtown city, turning quietly away from haunted regions of ghosts shouting in arabic anger towards Saddam Hussein’s minions or the American invaders.  Superimposed in the same place were countless previous centuries of war and turmoil as factions warred against each other, back to the dawn of human civilization.  Xau could even see the influence of Cozalien experimentation on the young civilization of the then fertile crescent land.  He could see a creature, part human and part hawk flying overhead.  He followed this image upwards, into the sky and then into space, to a triangular Cozalien entity vessel with out-stretched arms.  Xau realized his attention had been diverted from his objective, but he felt the hawk was important.
As Xau wandered through the Cozalien entity, he realized he was now onboard Conus One, watching someone shapeshift from a hawk into a creature resembling Amon Ra of Egyptian lore.  Xau felt a need to follow a flickering trail of light towards another being elsewhere.  He often sees energy trails representing people’s association with each other; this one was failing.
As he suspected, he came upon Elaine Conus and her son Alexander.  The boy tried to comfort her tearful mother as she frantically began to throw clothing out of her closet, onto the floor.  Nearby, Xau could see large piles of recently discarded possessions.  Even Alex had thrown out some of his older toys.
Xau’s eyes opened up, back in his private room in the rehabilitation center, his associates Scott and Elodea there with him, still asleep in wolf form.  Xau pulled himself upright and forced himself over to the side of his bed, levering himself towards his wheelchair.  The commotion awoke his two companions, who shifted upright.  As Elodea began helping him move, Scott began dressing himself, asking, “what did you see?”
“I have to get to Conus.  This has nothing to do with Shann, but Conus is in trouble.”
“What’s going on?”  Elodea asked, assuming a near-human form.
“I’ve destroyed his family,” Xau answered, wasting no time to steer himself out the door as the two followed him.  He passed by a nursing station with fervor.  The staff at the station were about to comment on his good progress, but he spoke before they could respond, “Thank you for your help, but I have to go.”
“Now?”  The evening charge nurse asked.  “Against medical advice, at this time of night?”
“Email me the paperwork; I’ll fill out the waivers on the way.”   He took out a handheld computer strapped to the inside of his chair’s armrest, and spoke into it.  “Contact Conus One and request a shuttle.”

Xau frantically pushed his chair along the corridor out of Conus One’s shuttle bay, struggling to keep his speed while navigating the erratic catwalks in the crystalline vessel interior.  Scott and Elodea followed behind, walking briskly, taking deep breaths.
“Xau, I’m an old wolf,” Scott muttered, panting even though he was in human form.  Elodea was also having a hard time keeping up.
“At least you have your legs,” Xau answered back, as he continued to his wheelchair along.  “Maybe I should have taken a modern chair afterall.”  Then, he hit a corner, propelling himself out, to the ground.  Scott and Elodea gasped as Xau gritted his teeth, punching the ground.  He shifted to wolf form and tried to walk forward, limping along.  He was moving, but too slowly.
“My God,” Scott commented, “you’re walking!”
Xau shifted form and tried to stand upright, but was unable.  As Elodea brought his chair up, he pushed himself into it, shifting closer to human form.  “Can you get me to Conus?”

The entourage of lycanthropes arrived at the control deck of Conus One, where they came upon a being, part hawk and part human, looking back at them.  This entity retracted feathers from his arms, and his face shifted into that of Anderson Conus.  “Xau?”  He asked, also noticing his two companions, the founders of the L.G.F.F.
“Elaine,” he answered back.  “You have to go to her.  She’s…”
“She’s gone already,” Conus answered back, hanging his head.  “It’s too late.”
“I’m…so sorry,” Xau answered back.  “I never meant to destroy your marriage.”
“You did nothing wrong,”  Conus strolled across the command deck of the vessel, surrounded by a chaotic hybrid of human and Cozalien technology.  “I had plenty of opportunity to see what was in front of me.  This was my own obsession.”  He picked up a small, octahedral device, and held it in front of him.  He released it, but it continued to hover in front of him, glowing slightly.  “She told me that I was so obsessed with Cozalien technology that I was turning into this ship.  Now that I’ve implanted myself with Cozalien cybernetics, that’s exactly what’s happening.  I understand everything it feels and sees.  I just could not do that with Elaine.”  He sat down at a central console.  “Maybe I was never meant to have a family at all.”
“Elaine may not be your wife much longer,” Xau answered, “but Alex is still your son.”
“Even if I could get joint custody, I don’t know how to raise him.  I simply haven’t been there long enough.”  As he fidgeted with a panel on his armrest, he continued to comment.  “It’s funny.  He had this fantasy, about growing up to be a genetic engineer, making a person with wings.  I thought a lot about all the different animals I could be.  I guess even when we’re apart, we still affect each other.”  A display came up on a large central viewscreen suspended over the long, triangular windows of Conus One’s forward hull.  Images and diagrams of brain tissue and crystalline structures flickered by.  “Scott, in answer to your question, Shann did not get any information about Cozalien cybernetics from the STAR Corporation before the TRI-STAR merger.  However, as far as I can tell, that’s only because he already has what he would need.”

Xau’s ghostly wolf form wandered down the streets of Baghdad, passing centuries of turmoil and roaming unhindered into the heavily secured corporate headquarters of Shann Enterprises.  Inside, he could see people in business attire meeting with each other and with online associates, and then in deeper levels technicians maintaining clusters of hybrid organic and silicon data banks.  Xau could sense a strong energy emanating from the computer arrays, with bridges reaching out to Kuwait City, Paris, and Las Vegas, other strongholds of Shann’s empire.  However, Xau could not find Thomas Shann himself.
He was not alone; few had seen Shann in person for years.  Even Scott and Elodea had only met with Thomas indirectly, online over the last few years.  Then, Xau discovered why.  Deep within Shann Enterprise’s Paris branch, Xau came upon a mausoleum, bearing the inscription, “Thomas Shann, 1993-2074.”  Xau’s astral form looked through the stone walls, into the dried, inert body inside.
Then, Xau was back in his body, sitting in his chair on Conus One’s control deck.  “Thomas Shann died three years ago,” he said, as Conus, Scott, and Elodea gathered around him.  The lycanthropic bridge crew peered away from their stations towards Xau, stunned with the revelation.  “I think he transferred his consciousness into a computer network.”
“The Cy-Brain project,” Elodea answered.  “We followed a rumor that it could archive consciousness—it just sounded so fantastic—immortality like Scott’s sister is itself hard enough for humankind.  But, existing as an advanced intellegence, beyond need of a physical body…”
“Scott Gardener added, “give someone like Shann the ability to expand his brain power exponentially…”
“Speak of the Devil,” Anderson Conus stated, activating a control panel, bringing onto the main viewscreen a display of Thomas Shann.  “He’s just issued this press release.”

“Good evening; I am Thomas Shann.  For several years my associatges and I have developed in secret a project I have named ‘C.A.T.’—the Control Administration of Thomas.  Its purpose is to serve as a model for world stability and eventually a unified world government, with the interests of manifesting at last the dream of world peace.  We have tested C.A.T. and it has proved itself viable under the most difficult of circumstances.  Under it, the historically volatile Middle East has come together in the form of the Arabian Union.  Within this union are the former nations of Palastine and Israel, historic enemies.  We have brought together the numerous peoples of Iraq, Iran, and Syria.  We have united Pakistanis, Kurdish tribes, and many others in peaceful coexistence.  If we can help these people find common ground, I believe that we can do the same for the rest of humanity.
“C.A.T. is a democratic system.  We have no desire for totalitarianism or fascism.  By expanding C.A.T. in the Middle East, we have indeed helped several nations to eliminate the overriding presence of such governments.  We do not condone the use of violent tactics, such as those used last year by Christopher Bartlett under the pretense of motivating world peace.  We offer our system with no desire for violence or conflict.  We have no interest but to end war.
“So, I now invite all nations of the world to join me.  Together we can fulfill the vision of world peace.  It is possible; we can become one people.  Please consider my offer; thank you, and God bless.”

Xau wobbled as he stood up out of his chair.  But, even as he did, Scott Gardener fell back, speechless at first.  Finally, he found words to mutter.  “He’s asking the world to surrender…before he makes the killing moves.”