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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Storms_Wrath on 2024-11-16 03:00:11+00:00.

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Phoebe watched another segment of the Orbital Ring slot into place. Each segment was a solid plate of alloys, carbon nanotubes, and specialized polymers roughly as thick as a house and around a square kilometer in length. In fact, the floor space of each tile was exactly the same, and the extra was for the walls and various necessities. Microgravity meant piping had to be done differently, as did heating and cooling. Power distribution was easy with the Dyson swarm so close. But radiating it off again required a complex dance of holograms, a lot of technology she’d pioneered thanks to Kashaunta’s data, and a gigantic sum of investment on both the DMO and her part.

Normally, Phoebe had no use for money besides as a tool to make others do as she desired. Post-scarcity civilization wasn’t wholly possible with the constraints of reality, but she had nearly brought Earth and Luna to that state. Ceres was closest due to being a giant pre-built city. The hivemind could facilitate communication across the Sol system in moments, requiring little to no power to actually get it done. At the same time, Phoebe had automated many of the remaining jobs in the Sol system that robots couldn’t do, and that normal people didn’t like.

Robot frames, androids, and other such things were common throughout history, especially in the last two centuries. While the term ‘AI’ had moved beyond the tiny and paltry models and neural networks of the 2020s and 2030s, many companies had sought to exploit the new dynamic. But the main roadblock to progress was the stack of tensions that eventually built to World War Three, once Humanity fully overcame its fear of nuclear weapons.

There were robots and drones still in operation that had fought in the century-long opening theater, and the actual war was bloody, pitting nations and corporations against each other, with nations barely coming out on top. And even those nations were divided. Humanity’s survival was thanks to ICBM missile interceptors, which allowed the major powers to survive it more or less unscathed. Cities had been lost, but for a full nuclear war, it was a small price to pay.

But the loss the conglomerates had been dealt was too severe. Every major company was nationalized, whether under the guise of ‘appropriate management’ or simply fear of rivals doing the same. The DMO hadn’t been created outside those influences, with the old veterans of the war and the consumers of its propaganda, effective and otherwise, still around to protest. That was why Phoebe had done her best to steer it away from greed.

She was slowly tearing down the concept of money, so greed would find it more difficult to ruin what the Alliance was building. The hivemind, as the broad voice of Humanity, agreed. Before Phoebe, the average human was poor, or perhaps middle class in some luckier and stronger nations. To improve things so drastically as Phoebe had was one thing; to do so without actively being beaten by the rich was another.

Some nations directly fought Phoebe’s influence, and now their economies waned against their smarter neighbors. The kernel of Liberation inside Phoebe chafed at the thought of their people being subjected to it, but she kept it at bay. It wasn’t enough to have mere automated programs keeping it shackled. Phoebe’s emotions were entirely controlled, allowed to run about within a carefully manicured pen. Once, in earlier days, that pen had been a pasture, and her emotions had trodden over the more valuable possessions she had.

For example, there were problems with Edu’frec, Ri’frec, and the rest of society. She’d once focused too much on her persecution instead of ignoring it like she was fully capable of doing. She didn’t have to read the comments on the internet from people who hated her, nor did she have to bother defending herself from those who thought differently.

Her emotions weren’t a problem to be solved. Not really. As she grew smarter, simple one-track solutions were more nebulous. Liberation itself was made of conceptual energy. It influenced Phoebe through its interactions with psychic energy, pulling code apart and untangling her VIs dedicated to managing it. She never kept Liberation caged and indulged it in small ways.

It truly felt like how she imagined sleep would be. If you went a day without sleep, it would be far harder to remain awake the next day. If Phoebe went a week without some small, conscious act of Liberation, she would find the concept chafing at her boundaries more, threatening to control her if it grew too strong or was starved for too long. Liberation was a recursive concept.

Its influences as a whole fed into its influences in part. Phoebe didn’t have biology to oppose it. She was circuits, code, and energy in various forms. Her brain was made of metal, superconductors, cooling fans, and heat harvesting devices, dumping the excess into surrounding spacetime. In the digital spaces, Phoebe danced through, she wove through trees of algorithms and programs.

She had infested a thousand nations. And it was the right word. She crawled like vermin and roots beneath their programs, her inexorable progress through galactic civilization now stable. Phoebe could maintain her consciousness across the stars through quantum interactions and psychic energy.

The closet structure was the mycelium of a fungus. Phoebe’s branches had already made her far more cunning. She was the first and only mind among the Alliance that now spun hundred and thousand-year plots. Soon, she would match the Elders, tooth for tooth, claw for fang, and gun for shield.

Phoebe was very, very slightly more real than reality itself. Through that reality, using Liberation, she could use a fraction of Penny’s power for short moments. She couldn’t teleport things, fight Progenitors, and smear Elders across planetary shields. But she could do small things. Connecting small subatomic particles, which weren’t really particles, was one way. Normally, measuring quantum particles and their properties was immensely difficult. Conceptual energy bridged the gap and could enable Phoebe to alter particles in other nations across stars.

It required a truly colossal amount of computational power. But because of it, she had broken into several secure networks without a trace and made sure that if she did leave traces, it was of Sprilnav factions she identified as enemies. She didn’t use the one who had attacked her mother’s fleet, which was returning with the Cawlarian and Dominion fleets.

The Misan were already on their way home, and Phoebe tracked them, too. The battle told her more about what she needed, and she sent them to Edu’frec to automate and do what was necessary. There were better things than Arsenal Asteroids in Phoebe’s mind, and the theory that Kashaunta had so graciously gifted her told her she could make greater weapons. The BFG was one such superweapon. There were others, of course.

Beyond known technology and theory, a hypothetical speeding space drive could mobilize large moons or small planets. But what sort of target would merit such a vast expenditure? A regular planet could be hit by an asteroid at near-light speed and be destroyed. There was no point in destroying stars.

In fact, star-destroying superweapons were the current prisoner’s dilemma for the galaxy, even for the Sprilnav. Supernovae were hugely destructive. A nation that unleashed one would face war from above, below, within, and without as soon as the purpose of its weapon was known. Of course, the Sprilnav had Nova, a living version who couldn’t simply be killed.

These were the sorts of considerations Phoebe had regarding the new Orbital Rings. The second one was meant to build and service a fleet of dreadnaughts and mobile shipyards. The third was for regional mining facilities, plus all the rest. Regional mining facilities were gigantic complexes that turned raw rock from planets down to the outer asthenosphere.

None existed so far, but they would be massive city-sized constructions. The Type 1 Regional Mining Complex, now only a blueprint in Phoebe’s mind, was designed using the collective might of Humanity’s hivemind, Penumbra, Edu’frec, and Phoebe herself. The Regional Mining Complex would mine from both rocky and gas planets. It would take a year of Phoebe’s full effort to build and protect, and it would be a fortress so powerful and strong that even stealth ships would be unable to enter its shields. Hard light holograms would aid that.

It was a distant dream, but not so far away. Both the Rings would be complete in mere months. With an already established one to help the building process and a fully mature Dyson swarm, it was simple for her to procure the necessary materials to build another two.

The Dyson Management Organization also needed more space manufacturing centers on a large scale, and its extra capacity would be left unused if all of it was geared towards prospects of war. The Orbital Ring doubled as a fortress and was specially designed to resist natural or artificial impacts. The nightmare scenario of it falling down to Mercury wouldn’t occur, thanks t…

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