Interstellar Age

Chapter 429 More Than Flesh and Bone

Once Erich was back in his own time, he was greeted once more by Tia. This time around, however, her tone was far less panicked than before as she greeted her Master as if he had been gone an exceptionally long time.

Though the information from her reconnection to Erich's NeuroLink actively told her everything, the man had been through, thus alerting her to the fact that the man had only been gone for less than a day. She still treated Erich as if he was returning from a long voyage.

"Welcome back Master! Tia was so lonely when you were away!"

Tia was a complicated existence. She had evolved into a sentient being because of the feelings she developed towards Erich. Feelings which were incredibly intense. But she was not as one dimensional as Erich had thought she was in the past.

This was revealed when she dropped the cutesy act of referring to herself in the Third person, but for whatever reason she appeared to be using it again. It was something that Erich could not truly fathom, and thus he decided to ignore it entirely, and instead shift the subject elsewhere.

"Did anything interesting happen while I was away?"

Tia knew Erich wasn't really asking this, as he understood that from his perspective, he had vanished for a single moment in time. But she decided to play along with his games, regardless.

"Not at all. You were gone for less than a second. You do have an incredible ability to precisely return to the moment you left. If not for the fact that your NeuroLink immediately alerted me to everything you saw and did in the past the moment you came back to our time, I would have never known you were gone.

That is very interesting though how it turns out that all along you were the reason that your people fled Earth and invented the FTL drive. Well, I suppose this disproves the lies of the Confederation of Human Worlds who said that your ancestors stole the first FTL drive.

But this also proves they were right about your ancestors being terrorists. So it would appear that there was truth and lies mixed between both accounts of the past. It is always interesting how different history can be from what was actually recorded after the fact."

Erich couldn't help but agree with this sentiment. The past was indeed different from what he had been taught, but it was still similar in more ways than it was different. Obviously, his ancestors couldn't tell their people that a giant from the future gave them the technology to invent the FTL drive.

At the same time, it was not exactly as if things were so different from what he had been taught. The history books of the Empire did say that the founders of the Empire waged a war against international interests which sought to destroy them before ultimately fleeing the Earth.

This was less conventional and more unconventional, but it was still a war nonetheless. And from the perspective of the Germanic League, they weren't necessarily terrorists but rather freedom fighters and separatists who used whatever means they could to liberate themselves from an international cabal.

As for the Confederation of Human Worlds and their retelling of history. Well, it would appear that envy was a miserable bitch after all. No doubt they discovered that the Germanic League abandoned Earth, and were baffled by how they managed to get such technology.

Thus, they decided to tell future generations about the existence of these terrorists who sought to disrupt the power of their globalist society by saying they were terrorists and thieves.

Terrorists? Perhaps from the perspective of those in power, but thieves? Most certainly not. After all, Erich just proved that he was the one who gave his ancestors the technology they needed to embark on in their exile.

But then again, he supposed it would be rather difficult to explain where the Germanic League got their hands on such technology when they were supposedly nothing more than a bunch of backwards terrorists. Or why they themselves weren't able to invent such technology for another few decades, if not a full century?

Naturally, they couldn't admit that these ethno-nationalists and racial separatists had come up with a technology previously thought to be a matter of science fiction all on their own. Or else that would give credence to their ideals. At least to some degree.

So the easiest solution was to lie, and say that the "terrorists" stole the FTL drive, killed the scientists, and destroyed all data on the project, thus setting back humanity as whole by a century's worth of progress.

While reflecting upon all of this, Erich couldn't help but shake his head and express a sentiment that was oddly similar to what Tia had been saying for years.

"Fucking meatbags. Such petty and prideful creatures, aren't they?"

Tia's eyes widened in shock when she heard this before breaking out into a fit of laughter. It was a rare occurrence and thus Erich looked at her as if she had gone insane, ultimately resulting in the artificial intelligence giving him a tempting offer.

"You know Master, if you ever wanted to forsake your flesh and enter a state of higher consciousness, Tia could always upload your mind to the Grid, and thus you would in a way become something akin to Tia herself…."

Erich scoffed at this idea. He was born a human of flesh and bone, and he would die a human of flesh and bone. Well, technically, he would just have his consciousness uploaded into another body of flesh and bone… But…. Was this really all that different from the body of an android, or a more robotic form like the one Tia tended to possess when she felt like taking a physical form?

Because of this, Erich's previously dismissive attitude suddenly changed to one of serious contemplation as he voiced his thoughts on the matter, another sentiment which surprised Tia.

"An interesting proposal, one that I will keep in mind should there come a day where I wish to become more than just flesh and bone…"

Tia was shocked by how Erich treated her jest with sincerity. Perhaps his traversing time and space with his consciousness had made him more aware that his flesh was just a vessel, and that there were ways for his consciousness to possess more than just his current physical form.

Regardless, she decided to dedicate a side process to building an android body for Erich should he ever choose to discard his flesh.