Chapter 51:
"Since you're a robot girl, how do you bear my children?" I asked Sophie something that had long been a lingering question in the back of my mind.
"Since Mira and I are both nanite colonies, I asked her for advice, and reformulated myself along the same pattern." Sophie answered nonchalantly.
"So when Mira dived into the realm of possibility to find her own solution, she ended up saving you too? That's pretty convenient!" I marveled at Mira's capabilities yet again.
"Mira risked her own life for the answer, so it's only efficient if we maximize the benefit like this." Sophie explained.
"So did you team up with Mira and MOMO for the Magic tournament?" I asked, having never come up against her team myself.
"No. Since you set our team number to five, and since exactly five of your waifus are voiced by Kana Hanazawa, we decided to team up together. It was Mikan, Rinoa, Kobato, Nadeko and me." Sophie smiled wryly.
"I love her voice so much, and she's just the perfect seiyuu for the type of girl I tend to like, so I loaded up on Kana Hanazawa waifus beyond all others. I hope you all don't resent me for not being unique enough?" I asked.
"Actually we treat it as a point of honor, that we have your favorite voice. It gives us a leg up on the competition, so we don't mind at all." Sophie smiled at me fondly to show there were no hard feelings.
"What do you do when you aren't hanging out with me?" I asked, wanting to learn more and more about my otherwise non-talkative wife.
"I was born with the desire to hunt down and destroy my archenemy Lambda, so mainly I fight, and fight, and fight. This planet is a little too peaceful for me, so I spend most of my time in the virtual worlds. Remakes of Tales games are my favorites, but anything will do. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy -- I even beta playtest everything Aoba cooks up for us. Every day I go kill powerful monsters and hone my skills. It's incredibly satisfying whenever I take something big down with my own two fists." Sophie reported with a buoyant look just thinking about it.
"That must be discombobulating, since you work at the Hospital healing people all day." I smiled, patting her head. It's great that she'd found her own place in this vast world, that she could stay entertained even though I couldn't spend much time with her.
"It's fun helping people too. I was also a robot designed to help mankind. Thanks to Cute-sama warping us here with our full specs intact, I have miraculous healing powers, so I may as well put them to good use in the real world. Plus, you keep getting me pregnant, so a lot of the time, when you're away, I'm taking care of our children. Between the three there's really no time left." Sophie pointed out.
"How do you think it's possible? Is there really a singular law of physics that can accommodate every single super power you waifus have? Sakura's cards, Rinoa's sorceress mode, the Silver Crystal, Dimension W and all the others?" I asked Sophie.
"It's obviously impossible. That's why I called it Cute's miracle. Only God can sustain this universe and all its contradictory rules. It would shatter without her forcefully holding it together. Every breath we take is Cute's gift to us. You didn't realize?" Sophie looked at me with her eyebrows raised curiously.
"I sort of suspected." I coughed, blushing. Was it possible that I still didn't love Cute-sama nearly as much as she deserved? How much more could I worship her before she received what was due?
"You would be Aoba's identical twin if not for the robot features. So have you two become fast friends?" I got back on track. I was spending tonight with Sophie, not Cute, it wouldn't do to be thinking of Cute right now.
"It wasn't because of our twintails. It's because she oversaw the VR remakes of the Tales franchise." Sophie rolled her eyes at me. "But yes, we're friends now. I spend more time with her than you."
"That's fine. I want everyone to be happy and I can't be everywhere at once, so hang out with anyone you like. Just please reserve the sex for me." I begged.
"You have nothing to fear. As a robot who would do back flips for you on command while you were still just a toddler, betrayal isn't a possibility." Sophie kissed me reassuringly.
Robot waifus for the win!
* * *
MOMO walked into the Mayor's office with a giant smile on her face. "There!" MOMO plopped an invisible object onto my oaken desk with a look of triumph, sitting in the guest chair across from me.
"I'm sorry, but my eyesight isn't good enough to really get what you're getting at. . ." I gave MOMO a supplicant look.
"I'm not just some toy for you to play around with -- I'm a bona fide member of the Research Institute!" MOMO pointed at the invisible object I was supposed to be amazed by.
"A cloaking device?" I guessed hopefully.
"What would we want that for? Its only purpose would be to assassinate the Mayor, i.e., you, which as your widow I am definitely hantai." MOMO said.
"Well that's a relief, but I'm still not sure what you're trying to show me." I gave a troubled look to my robot waifu.
"We reverse engineered the nanite swarms that make up Mira and Sophie, and invented programmable, all-purpose nanomachines. What I just placed on your table was the future of space colonization! I, MOMO, with a little help from the others, have made terraforming the galaxy as simple as giving the command! It took over 100 years but I did it -- I repaid your faith in me. I did something at work!" MOMO leapt over the oaken desk and into my arms, incapable of repressing her joy any longer.
"So these little critters are going to give other worlds oxygen atmospheres, topsoil, fresh water lakes and rivers and all the rest? So all humans have to do is step off the ship and start frolicking?" I smiled, hugging my precious synthetic Sakura clone back. Her small body still packed infinitely more strength than my arms could return, but I tried my best.
"That's right. Nanomachines are simple, so they can reproduce themselves endlessly from base materials that can be found anywhere in the cosmos. Then they follow simple, repetitive, easy tasks, in such enormous numbers, and with sunlight as their only needed fuel source -- because they're small they don't need much power -- and make life possible for everyone and everything else. Just like Cute-sama gave us a ready-made Eden full of life on day 1, these nanomachines can give everyone a hospitable environment with everything they need, because they'll have gone there first and tidied the place up a bit. All we need from our new planets is decent rocky ground, the right temperature and water. We can even create our own artificial atmospheres by churning the rocks up. Nanomachines can do anything." MOMO bragged, now sitting contentedly in my lap sidesaddle and beaming up at me.
"Can they be trained to identify cancer cells and kill them on sight?" I ventured.
"Yes, just like in that movie. We can create miniature submarines and zap all the viruses out of your body. People will never get colds again." MOMO nodded happily.
"Fantastic Voyage." I relied on Cute-sama's gift of a perfect memory.
"Mmhmm." MOMO nodded. "It can also be weaponized into invisible omnipresent killers that wipe out mankind, so we imprinted the nanites with a failsafe command that it couldn't hurt healthy living tissue."
"That was thoughtful of you." I took a deep breath. What was the use of gun control if our technology kept growing by leaps and bounds like this? Pretty soon even my 2 year old son Cress could just push a button and kill us all off.
"The hospital could use some high tech answers. The population keeps growing but the white mages don't, so I think Rinoa is going to be thrilled." I patted MOMO on the head, despite the fact that I still couldn't see anything actually present on my desk. "You did a great job. This was the final piece to the puzzle. Now we really can spread across the stars."
"First we'd have to spread to another town, but yes, in general, that's the idea." MOMO purred against me, trying to snuggle deeper.
"I guess it's our duty to have a ninth child, then." I gave in to her temptation.
"It can't be helped." MOMO agreed, turning her face up to look me in the eyes as I leaned down to kiss her on the lips. Our celebration took a decidedly sordid turn, as I was wont to turn every eventuality into.
Robot waifus for the win!
* * *
The starships launched with their cold sleep rebel cargo in tow. Six prison planets had been designated their targets, lining up with their ideological beefs with me. Each was attuned to violators of the various Commandments.
So if you didn't think crime was a big deal and it shouldn't be punished severely, if you felt no standards of human decency should be upheld at all, such that everyone could be uneducated, fat, tattooed, pierced thugs if they damn well pleased, that was one starship.
If you thought marriage wasn't necessary in life and relationships should be temporary consensual billiard-ball-like ricocheting encounters, that was one starship.
If you thought democracy was the way to go, that was one starship.
If you wanted to have deviant sex and take drugs all day, that was one starship.
If you wanted to be a rugged individualist and insisted everyone else sink or swim the same as you, that was one starship.
If you wanted to believe in anti-scientific nonsense or worship the devil instead of Cute-sama, that was one starship.
Farewell and good riddance, traitors.
With nanomachines who would descend to the surface and rearrange things to be comfortable first, the first moment they would wake up is once they had been deposited on the surface of a green and hospitable new world, the starships all long gone, with their course set back for Eden for their next load. They would get the exact same start we had when we landed on Eden. Given my opinion of their ideologies, I doubted things would go well, but that was for them to try out themselves. If they succeeded, more power to them. I still wasn't going to change my mind about how things worked on Eden.
If they could flower their civilizations to the point of space colonization, I wouldn't stop them. But I still intended to become Galactic Emperor before them, and if they tried to invade a star system I'd already claimed -- well, good look doing battle with my demigod children. They could have their Star Destroyers, I was going to bet on Yushis, Mizal and Dizzy when the time came.
The thorns in my side were gone. The constant reminder of my eight missing children was resolved. I had been true to my word and given them a new chance in a new world. My waifus would just have to accept that there was no retrieving them any longer, they had all gone to 'a better place,' as the phrase went. The sooner they were forgotten the better. I never liked their names anyway.
