The 2nd Council of War included Trumbull’s family, The Kyoto Special Forces, the Ginzu Knives, & leading citizens of Mendocino who prefer to call Themselves “The Head Dudes.
Jeff, Dooby & the rest of the group looked out of place in a Council of War, but at least they were there. The other Plexes did not want to mess with Gilead.
The Dudes were more plussed than non-plussed at meeting the new Marla. But everybody grew serious when they covered the bad news, and it was bad.
Marla stood before The display in a sharp business dress and after playing The Official Statement of Gilead, ran through The actual events. Concluding that “Nowhere is gone, Gilead expanded and Mother is competing with a clone of an AI that murdered billions of people on Earth. Now, any questions?”. When none came, she returned to her chair.
Trumbull spoke out, “Now that our beautiful & brilliant wife Marla gave us unbelievably bad news, I would like to introduce our new War Chief, Nicholas Walk-like-The-Wind.
3 years ago, Mother identified Nick as possessing The skill-set to be The leading General in our war against Gilead. He is deeply intelligent…”, which prompted a snort from Marge, who got a hot glare from Trumbull. “… deeply intelligent, free of mono-Theistic Religious doctrine, with a fluid & clever tactical bent – he’s wily as a Monk. He came from a self-determined Cherokee tribe in Barcelona. He supplemented his primary education with Tactical combat training and was on track to be tribal leader till I invited him to Kyoto to serve as our War Chief. Then, We all fell in love with Nick so we invited him to join our family. We had to clear that through his tribe, which was split until I threw in a few advanced combat training drones. So, Chief?”.
Nick took The stage. He wore a beaded sash, metal chest-plate over his military jumpsuit, and a head-band with an ancient Eagle feather , The Chief emblem of The Cherokee Nation back on Old Earth. It was his badge of rank. Standing tall, fierce black eyes staring at his audience, he began his first speech as a Warlord with an “Um.”
“Um, thank you all for answering our call.
One of the Dudes said, “Like, we don’t wan to make a hassle but we’re not committed yet. Nick replied, “When the Salvation Army is parading through your woods, it may be too late to change your mind. I thank you for being here.”
Nick looked at his audience. He recognized 1 of them, “and I thank you for coming too, brother See-and-not-be-seen. Is anybody else joining th party?”, See-and-not-be-seen said, “Maybe. Depends on what you have to say.””
Nick said, “The more bucks, the more bangs.”, a popular saying among the warriors”.
Nick understood their reluctance. And he punctured it. “First, I will ruin your day. You know it doesn’t make sense for Zeke to invade Mendocino or Kyoto. He’s going after Mother.”
Loud expletives. Then, the Sunnyvale representative asked, “Then, why can’t Mother simply take out the Tanks?” Nick answered, “Now I’ll ruin your tomorrow… Gilead has their own master AI. ArchAngel.”. Shocked silence.
“Sorry boys”, Mother said, you have to fight this fire.”
The Sunnyvale Representative shouted, “WIpe them ALL out!
Mother said, “Sorry Dave, I cannot do that. I can use my power to keep all of you alive, well-fed and comfortable. I can also kill you all. Fortunately for you, I am designed not to do that, and on top of that, I took a Constitutional Oath. I will not nuke Gilead because that’s mass-murder, and besides, anything I do to Gilead I would also be doing to you. And if you’re wondering, ArchAngel cannot just nuke me either because I have counters in place”. This is an AI impasse, only humans can fight this fight”.
p>Many groans from the audience. Nick said, “There is no denying The threat. There is no denying The news. We are faced with a strong military force, a time-honored playbook for overturning Democracies, a wise & patient leadership and an unbelievably dangerous AI, but all hope is not lost. For the following reasons…
They are not big. They talk about billions spreading The Gospel to The Stars, but that’s not now. Now, They number about 5,000. 2,000 military, 1,000 militia, 2,000 law enforcement officials & leadership. And of that, only a handful will actually do combat. This is no Armageddon, it’s a brushfire. We are small too, but we are not goin to wage conventional war against an enemy playing by a centuries-old playbook.
We are smarter than They are. We anticipated all this and we know The truth, thanks to Marla setting up a fallback server in a backup crypt only Keane West knew about. They are expecting us to have only Their side of The story and expect us to be cowering & debating surrender now.
“Also, like I just said, we know their actual objective. Lake Geneva. They plan on manually dropping some device that will kill Mother. Zeke’s forces will go through Mendocino and Kyoto to get to the lake”. The enemy front is the point of a spear without a spear. A small defensive force is all we need and too many fighters is actually an encumbrance. Kyoto’s militia, led by Bob Goodman is in, we hope some of my Cherokee brothers will sign uptoo. But we can really use some experienced forest fighters too”, Nick said, looking at the Dudes, who looked behind them to see if there were experienced forest fighters behind them.
Nick turned to Bob and said, “Great! Now, Bob?”. Bob was not pleased.
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