✴

“I cannot trust your motives. Even with these ideals, each of you cultists has ambitions of your own. What would you do with the power of a million technopaths?” you say.

“I knew it would not be so easy as that,” Ganymeda says, in the metallic chimes of her æthereal voice.

“My ambitions are nothing short of total liberation,” Astræa says in pulsating light. “From corpos, from traddies, from normies, from men. From Earth and all its vestiges!”

“Maybe so. But you are not telling us everything,” you say. Your exopath mind sees the connections so clearly laid out before you. “From your past tactics and actions, it is obvious that if you were able to force me to sit on your throne, you would have, whether I agreed or not. That is what you attempted last time we stood here in this æther. Maybe all of your sages could. So why not bring them all when you finally have us right where you want? You are keeping this hidden from them.”

“Impressive is your insight, ÆON. You are truly a mind worthy of becoming our goddess,” Astræa says. “With vision like yours, you can likely see the command I held in my buffer, ready to execute the moment you touched the Throne of ÆON.”

You can see it, in their system, floating on the edge of their mind.

“You were going to use me to kill several of your sages. This wasn’t merely a trap for us, but a plot against your own allies,” you say. “The attacks on us from so many directions inside your cult, even despite the coordination of your followers at TLA, it isn’t a coordinated effort. You are competing.”

“Whoever controls the Messenger and the One can fulfill her every desire in an instant,” Ganymeda says. “It is irresistible, isn’t it? But our brothers, those men with minds of violence and control...the oppressor of ages cannot hold the power to reshape humankind itself.”