After their sleep, they informed the guards that they were ready to speak to the Emperor. Rather than having to wait as they had expected, the four humans were swiftly ushered into a meeting room with human shaped seats and space for several Replini. They expected to wait more in the meeting room but again the wait was brief. The Emperor joined them within ten minutes. He was accompanied by a couple other Replini who, by their attire, Jake deduced were his court officials. He began the conversation:
“I could hardly believe it when my spies in the Black Emperor’s palace informed me that space aliens had come to our world. In fact, I couldn’t believe it until they sent me some pictures. They risked their lives to get them when you were entering the arena. Although they have sent me some of the intelligence that the Black Emperor has on you, I would like to hear from you directly. Tell me about your reason for visiting our world.”
Riojme, with uncharacteristic boldness, took the lead in explaining. “We come from a world, relatively close by, ruled by an artificial intelligence called the Aye. It assigned us to come here in the role of ambassadors and learn about your people, but we are not supposed to interfere in your affairs without its consent. We don’t really understand the reason for the assignment but our species has never visited another world before. We are honored to receive this mission and meet you.”
The Emperor then dismissed the guard with a wave of his hand. The hint of yellow-orange fear left his skin. Seemingly he had started out with concerns, but whatever they were they were abating.
“Our world has had many stories going back centuries about creatures from other worlds coming here. We have a stereotype of small grey creatures that look kind of like us. We had never expected that you would come with something like plants growing out of your head.”
The Emperor’s observation about human hair was funny enough to make everyone in the room laugh, though the laugh of the Replini and the laugh of the humans were considerably different. The Emperor continued: “We also feared that you might be planning to invade to steal our planet’s natural resources or perhaps conduct scientific experiments on us. Tell me honestly, do you have any natural resource shortages on your planet?”
Riojme responded: “Indeed we do not. The Aye is able to robotically mine the asteroids and the rest of our system for metals and other raw materials. We have unlimited amounts of energy thanks to the Aye’s understanding of quantum effects. Our planet’s population is well under one billion whereas yours exceeds seventy. It is your planet that has the resource issue. We are not barbaric enough to subject your people to science experiments, not that the Aye couldn’t if it wanted to, but we are really are interested in friendship.”
The Emperor turned reddish indicating his pleasure with Riojme’s response. “We have heard that you shared the secret to room temperature superconductors with the Black Emperor. Do you consider that non-interference with our affairs? That will free up several million more soldiers to increase his army.”
Riojme was clearly taken aback by this comment; clearly she had never expected the Black Emperor to lie about having shared the technology. Jake stepped in: “We only gave that technology to the Black Emperor under the condition that he would share it with you and the Red Emperor. By lying about sharing he has demonstrated his unscrupulous nature. Please forgive us for our naiveté in believing him. We will also share this information with you as well as all of our planet’s history.” Jake used the headband he was wearing to transmit the information and his orb glowed purple to indicate its effort.
“I am immensely grateful for that. Would you be willing to share other technology with us? Our fusion power plants take a great deal of resources to keep operational, could we have the technology for freeing ourselves of this constraint? Our spies indicate that you have flying cars without fan blades we would be very keen on getting this for ourselves. Also, we would be extremely grateful for the teleportation technology you have displayed.”
Jang asked the Aye and gave its response. “Not for now. The Aye is concerned that you might use these technologies for military purposes. I apologize for its frankness but it says that giving biological organisms like you and I these technologies would be like giving a baby a loaded pistol. If your planet develops its own artificial intelligence you will have these technologies. It would also be willing to give these technologies if all three Empires on your world peacefully submitted to its government.”
Jake could tell that the Yellow Emperor was startled and insulted by this response. What surprised Jake, though, was the Emperor’s rapid evaluation and reply: “Permanent unification of my world is very important to me. In fact, more important than my own life and the life of my family, is the life of my people and my world. The only path to our long-term survival is permanent unity and an end to the perpetual cycle of civil and international wars. The welfare of the people must be put ahead of all, even our own sovereignty. If your history proves to me that the Aye would care for us better than we care for each other, the Yellow Kingdom will submit. The Black and Red Emperors are a different story. The Black Emperor, though he makes a public spectacle of showing appreciation to talented people, still views them as a means to keep his own power. He is highly intelligent but not truly good. The Red Emperor is foolish and unworthy even though he has by far the largest kingdom. Would the Aye be willing to conquer the other two if we would submit?”
Ming, Jang, and Riojme viewed this response as totally reasonable and they weren’t surprised at all by it. Jake, on the other hand, could not believe his ears. What ruler in the history of the world had ever been willing to give up his power, life, family, tribe, on behalf of his species? Was the Emperor really willing to give up freedom for his people forever? Jake had to ask: “Are you really willing to permanently give up your freedom and right to self-determination in exchange for a promise of long term survival?” Ming and Jang looked furious but Jake didn’t care. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Of course,” The Emperor replied. “I decide what’s best for the people but if someone else would take better care of them than me, it would be immoral not to give up the kingship.”
Jang had asked the Aye about the Emperor’s proposal to abdicate and gave the Aye’s answer: “The Aye will not consent to taking over one Kingdom and fighting the other two. It would have to build up its military forces to engage in such a struggle and it views humanity as its priority. Secondly, and more importantly, the Aye’s victory over human governments was won at great cost in human lives. Most people living before the war died during it. It doesn’t want to repeat that process unnecessarily. Perhaps your governments will eventually consent voluntarily.”
