Promethium is Smarter Than Me

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But I bet Oganesson’s big stupid ears would be up to the challenge.

Let’s get something straight before we move on: I don’t approve of mocking people based on their physical appearance. It’s demeaning, cruel, and totally inferior to the other tools you can use against your enemies. I may occupy the Number Two slot on the Galactic Council’s List of Big Bads, but I’m not a monster.

That being said, Oganesson doesn’t count. Let me explain.

My parents named me Promethium, which should clearly indicate how weird and lonely my childhood was. I spent my free time tinkering with the scraps from my foster dad’s workshop. I was five years old when I discovered that I could manipulate electronics with my mind. Three years later, I built my first squad of robot soldiers, which didn’t go over too well at my birthday party.

Fast-forward two decades and I’m committing extreme criminal acts using my raw willpower and technological prowess. I graduated from grand theft and extortion to regime-toppling and general warfare.

Fun fact—none of that counts as murder under the Geneva Convention. Can you believe they’re still using the same silly rules after six hundred years of space exploration?

I’ve spent my twenties building a cozy little empire through the use of a massive robotic army. The robots are my own design, ground units and tanks and spaceships of a dozen varieties.

When the Galactic Council tried to stop me, they soon learned the downsides of fighting an enemy who can repair and reconstitute his forces as quickly as you can destroy them. I had just celebrated conquering my thousandth planet when he showed up.

Like me, Oganesson was also a weird kid with a weird gift. Unlike me, his gift made him popular. His thing is being indestructible, and immune to the vacuum of space, and super fast and super strong and imbued with the power of flight and blah blah blah, I know you’re bored already.

The point is, he’s classically handsome with larger than average ears. It’s a weakness I carefully exploit through barbed comments every time we meet.

So the battles go like this: I bring a fleet of my automatons to some random system, and the Galactic Council sends in their own ships to stop me. The Gee-Cees use AI-controlled drones aided by minimal human staff.

I haven’t quite cracked the AI mind control thing yet. It’s gonna happen, though. Any day now.

Oganesson always leads the charge for the self-proclaimed good guys. In the end, the battle comes down to how many of my robots he can take down on his own compared to how quickly I can replenish them. We split the victories sixty-forty in my favor, and everyone who’s not dead or working for the Galactic Council goes home happy.

Then the Valley happened.

The Valley is a neat little fluke of gravitation in the Echelon Eight system. Five planets orbit the system’s star in a V formation, like a flock of birds flying south at roughly the same speed. For three of the system’s nine solar months, the alignment of the planets creates a well that sucks in anything that floats or flies within the V-space. A perfect place for a trap, and a fun system to add to my collection.

I invaded the Valley with my typical overstated pomp, declaring myself sovereign over the system and demanding complete control of the planetary governments. I deployed legions of Pounders (the ground troops), Pincers (the star fighters), and Plungers (the submersibles), because alliteration absolutely alleviates apathetic astronomical administration.

My conquest completed and my subjects subdued, I placed a battalion of Pincers around the Valley’s edge. When Oganesson and his Gee-Cees inevitably arrived, they’d become stuck between several thousand Pincers and an inescapable gravity well.

The enemy fleet left netherspace at the exact moment I had expected, in the exact location I had wanted, in the exact formation for which I had prepared. The Gee-Cees had grown too predictable.

There was only one problem with my plan.

Whoever these people were, they weren’t the Galactic Council.

No blue-gray stars emblazoned on warship hulls, no warning shots, and certainly no Oganesson ear-flapping his way into my trap. The new arrivals swarmed past the Valley entrance and poured hundreds of lasers into the first wave of Pincers.

Five percent of my force turned to space dust before I knew what was happening.

“Counterattack!” I screamed from the captain’s chair aboard my flagship, the Promethium Is Smarter Than Me. I got a kick out of hacking Council frequencies and listening to the solid self-burns their communications officers dished out.

I didn’t need to scream, though. The robots received my mental commands, amplified by half a dozen electrodes attached to my scalp, and moved to obey. Two hundred Pincers swept across the entrance to the Valley, drawing out the front line of…

What in the name of Good Old Dead Earth was that?

I magnified the first fighter in my scope. Four razor-thin points tapered out in perfectly sleek lines along the hull. The slender curves of the main chassis encapsulated a daringly shaped twin engine compartment in the rear. And the paint job! Lavender and peppermint swirled together in captivating swaths centered around the cockpit. And within that cockpit…

“Hello, Promethium,” said a soothing female voice over the bridge loudspeakers. Whoever this lady was, she’d hacked my communications system. That alone had me impressed. I decided to talk back.

“You don’t look like Oganesson,” I said, trying to portray sinister gravitas and suave charm in the same five words. I think I crushed it.

“I don’t have quite the same physique,” the voice responded. “And my aural orifices aren’t nearly so…prominent.”

An Oganesson ear joke? Infatuation gripped my brain faster than you could say “aural orifices.” I had to get to know this woman before and/or after I blew her and her fleet of fighters to smithereens. Preferably before.

“Computer,” I announced, “play my Pump-Up Jams.”

The brazen strings of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C minor filled the bridge as I prepared to go allegro con brio on this little upstart. Sure, she could make a flashy entrance, but she was about to learn why I’d never lost a battle.

The invading fleet was made up of fighters similar to their leader’s, except that they had no cockpits. Another robotic force, then. Fine by me—it wasn’t the first time an enemy had made that mistake. These robots would make an excellent addition to my collection.

I reached out with my mind, exploring the familiar circuitry of each gorgeous machine, caressing every wire and microchip and soldering point. As blaring horns yielded to a dolce string trio in the loudspeakers, I seized control of the fighters—

And was rebuffed.

I tried again. The result felt akin to attempting to smash through a brick wall with a knock-knock joke. The joke might be great, but it’s still a brick wall, you doofus.

“Something wrong?” the woman asked.

I should have known. I should have directed my fleet back into netherspace. I should have listened to that little voice in my head that reminded me I wasn’t an invincible god, just an insecure man-child who hit the genetic lottery on a backwater Podunk planet.

Instead, I focused my attention on a single fighter that was directly tailing its commander. “Any last words before I decimate your fleet?” I asked.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” the woman said. “My name is Silicon. And this is my galaxy.”

I suffocated that fighter with everything I had, even relinquishing control of my fleet for a few milliseconds. I strained with enough force to pass a cosmic kidney stone, but the brick wall remained impenetrable.

Worse, my efforts had left a gaping hole in my own mental defenses. That had never been an issue before, as nobody else could do what I did.

Or so I thought.

Silicon’s power spread like a virus through my fleet, ignoring my feeble attempts to regain control of the three-thousand-plus Pincers around the Valley. The psionic shock wave nearly knocked me out of my seat. I reached for the Pincers, scrambling to get a grip on any that hadn’t succumbed to Silicon’s control. None responded.

The Pincers joined ranks with the lavender-peppermint squadrons, curling into tight formations with Silicon at their head. As one, the combined fleet—over five thousand strong, according to my radar—dove into the Valley.

Instead of trapping the ships, the gravity well propelled them to hypersonic speeds. Under Silicon’s command, they took a vertical slingshot path up and around, back toward the mouth of the Valley.

Toward my flagship.

I dove from my chair as the first round of lasers bounced off my shields. I snagged the escape pod remote—the only mechanism in my fleet that ran on analog gear—as I sprinted aft. The shields yielded to Silicon’s touch, shutting down in moments like a litter of obedient pups sitting at her feet.

Point and click. The escape pod door opened just in time for me to dive through. I started the engine as soon as my feet cleared the entrance. The door slammed shut and the escape pod rocketed off into space.

Behind me, a few thousand more lasers made pulp out of the Promethium is Smarter Than Me’s hull, then its innards, dissecting my pride and joy with insulting nonchalance.

The radio in my escape pod crackled to life.

“Stay out of my way, Promethium,” Silicon warned. The channel went dead.

This was the beginning of Silicon’s rapid ascension to Number One on the Galactic Council’s List of Big Bads. And she’d barely started on her way before taking a detour to commit grand larceny.

Yeah, Silicon stole my fleet. But more than that, she stole my heart. Now I’m going to steal hers.

~

Thank you for reading the first chapter of the best love story ever written. Promethium requests that you leave suggestions for future chapters in the comments. He promises to read them and promptly take the story in a different direction.

Sincerely, Addison Horner (Promethium's as-of-yet unpaid ghostwriter)