One Last System

Daniel's meeting with Patric lasted for a few more hours. During that time, Daniel ended up learning quite a lot about the things that he missed during his time spent warring with the hostile mercenary groups in Africa, too busy with the war to keep tabs on the minor events far away.

The entire meeting ended up the same way as it always did in the past, with both of them agreeing that they could never come to terms with the other party's beliefs and morals but opting not to turn their differences into a conflict on a real scale.

This was the lesson the two of them learned from the second world war, when things quickly spiraled out of their control, turning an ideological conflict of nation versus community into the most radical forms both of those belief groups could produce.

"So?" Alice asked as she finally returned from her chat with Maya, leaving her newfound friend in Patric's hands as they retreated for the night. "Did you learn anything about his plans?" she asked, bringing her hands together right on top of Daniel's chest before resting her chin on top of them.

"It looks like it's the usual," Daniel replied in a tired voice.

No matter how many times he tried, he could never convince his former disciple to follow his beliefs. Yet, just as he refused Patric's wish to artificially change humanity's genome to increase human lifespan by roughly fifty years on average, he opted not to force his views on his former disciple either.

After all, once all the details and formalities were to be shaved away, there was no real difference between the two, as just like increasing humanity's lifespan required the change to their very nature, enlightening Patric's view would require Daniel to change his physical nature as well.

"Do you expect him to cause any trouble?" Alice asked, rolling over to her side and taking over Daniel's arm only to use it as a pillow.

"To be honest, I don't know," Daniel admitted. "I might be the oldest being alive on this planet, but that doesn't make me omnipotent nor all-knowing," he admitted while his hand moved over to the back of Alice's head.

'And to be honest, I much more prefer to just cuddle like that rather than having you try to get on my dick every chance you get,' he thought, agonizing over how his inability to utter those words to the girl out loud continued for more than four thousand years by now.

"I don't expect you to know anything for sure," Alice whispered in a soft voice while her fingers danced on top of Daniel's chest. "I'm just asking what you think will happen, not what you know will happen for sure."

Daniel turned silent.

Even if the girl was simply asking for his guess… he couldn't really provide her with it either. Not because he didn't want to… but because he never really bothered to try to read Patric's moves in the first place.

Patric was the only other survivor from the Atlanti. Alice, although an enhanced human like Patric and Daniel, was two thousand years younger than Daniel's former disciple. And Daniel never tried to figure out their intentions in advance.

After all, at the level of mental complexity enhanced people like the three of them achieved after living for more than a thousand years, it was no longer possible to account for every possible move they would make.

"I don't think he will try to mess with the plan," Daniel finally admitted, more for the sake of humoring the girl rather than by revealing his true opinion. No matter how close he was to this girl, there were some things that he still kept to himself and himself alone, after all.

"Then, are you going to do something with the war once you stop all the nukes?" Alice changed her question.

"Honestly, I don't know," Daniel released a deep sigh. "From one end, I don't want to involve myself in human conflict anymore. Our entire expedition is an exception, but with the current level of technology, humans could render this planet sterile if they tried hard enough."

"How is that an answer to what I asked about?" Alice questioned, confused by Daniel's seemingly detached response.

"If I take a side in the coming conflict, Patric is bound to join the opposition," Daniel explained. "Maybe it's fate, for the two of us to always stand against each other in fights that neither of us cares about? I know for sure it's the case in fights we are actually interested in," Daniel pointed out, pursing his lips in a thin line when he recalled a set of extremely unpleasant memories.

The current arrangement when neither of them would involve themselves too heavily with any part of the human civilization was only about four hundred years old by now. And in order to create this pact, Daniel ended up giving up on the only civilization project he was ever passionate about in this cycle of humans building their civilization up only to end up destroying it all at once.

"So you are just going to let the coming war play out?" Alice asked, her hand falling flat on Daniel's chest.

For but a moment, Daniel could feel the girl's body tense up a tiny little bit. A small clue to… Daniel had no idea what. A small hint of the girl's true feelings that she grew pretty damn great at holding back.

"As I said, if I join the conflict, Patric will do the same. And then, there will be nothing to stop it from fully playing out," he explained.

"And then, by using all the technology that you revealed to the world during this expedition, humans are going to sterilize the planet, right?" Alice guessed where Daniel's point was going.

"That's right," Daniel nodded his head before pulling it to the back as far as he could and glued his eyes to the ceiling of the secondary bridge of his hover. "And while there is a lot of what I can do to fix this planet, with the current technology, it's possible to bring it beyond the point of salvation."

Daniel's statement was enough to shut both of them up. And so, for the next few moments, they simply laid down in silence, enjoying the reassuring warmth of the other person right by their side.

Soon, Alice's breathing steadied up as she fell deeper and deeper into the exhaustion of the night, ready to fully enter her sleep at any moment now.

Daniel, with all the improvements to his body, had a much harder time falling asleep. In fact, Alice's warmth and softness was the only thing that could help him fall into slumber with relative ease.

And yet, right as his consciousness started to fade away…

A small beeping sound reached his ears, alerting his brain and forcing it right back to its operating mode.

'What the hell is it this time?' Daniel cursed in his thoughts as he reached out for the nearby console before pressing activating a single screen located at just the right angle for him to look at without moving out from where he set up their bed.

Daniel then read into a message that appeared on the screen as soon as it launched… Only to jump out of the bed right away, not paying any mind to how doing so would wake Alice up.

"What's wrong…" Alice muttered in a groggy voice, still dizzy from being brutally woken up like that right as she was about to fully fall asleep.

"They've found it," Daniel announced, too busy grabbing his clothes and pulling them up to pay any attention to the girl's face. "We've finally found the correct vault!"