Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (5 page)

“No, your choice was correct.” Tomas said, and got a sharp look from Seo-yun, she started to speak but Tomas cut her off with a hand gesture, he turned back to the hologram.

“We will need access to the ship, and its databases, and translated into our language if it’s possible.” He said.

“You can access ships databases from any of the consoles, the data is recorded in Union standard, I am not able to translate as I have no access to those databases, I have access only to data which is included in my matrix or provided
to me by the crew for analysis. I can translate that portion of the data.” It said.

“That will be acceptable, but can you instruct my people on how to access the consoles and answer any of their questions
, and can you open the doors to other areas of the ship?” Tomas asked.

“Yes.”

Tomas motioned for Seo-yun, to follow him out of the room, but he stopped at the entrance and spoke again “How far away from the ship can you monitor our conversations?”

“In your measures 10.7 meters.”

Tomas nodded
. “Elias secure the ship.” He said and then left the room with Seo-yun following close behind, she caught up to him and tried to speak but Tomas stopped her by putting a finger across his lips. She caught on and followed, although he could see that she was aggravated. They exited the ship and found Marcus and another employee there waiting for them, Tomas saw that he was eager to learn what they found inside and was barely containing his curiosity.

“Marcus I need a room where the
Professor and I can speak privately.”

“
There is a conference room, Nora can show you where.” He said

“
And I need you to gather all personnel and inform them that from now on no one is to speak anything near the ship, at least until a proper guidelines are established, also no one is to enter until Professor Seo-yun briefs everyone.” Marcus looked crestfallen.

“Don’t worry, all of those here will get their chance to explore inside. As soon as I finish my conversation with the
Professor, she will brief you and then you can start.” Hearing that Marcus cheered up a bit.

Nora guided them to the conference room, and left them there alone. As soon as the door
closed Seo-yun turned to Tomas. “What the hell was that? Why did you lie to him?”

“I never lied.” Tomas replied.

“Never lied! You said we were part of this Union.”

“No, I said that it
s choice to let us in was correct, I never confirmed that we were a member of that Union.”

She looked at him with
an open mouth. “Still you lied by omission, we will need his help if we are to unlock that ships secrets, what do you think he will do when he realizes we aren’t who he thinks we are?”

“Blow us up.”

“What?” She said surprised.

“We need to make it believe we are a member of the Union, otherwise it will self-destruct, it said so itself.”

“Oh.” She said, in a soft voice, she remembered what it had said.

“You need to make sure our people don’t say anything that will make it think differently. And you need to gather as much information about this Union as you can while figuring a way to isolate it from the ship
s systems. Its programing is obviously corrupted, and no wonder, it’s been here for thousands of years. You must also find out how it got here, and why.”

“Yes, I know
.”

“You are in charge here Seo-yun, proceed in whatever manner
you think is best.”

Chapter F
ive

February 2082

Seo-yun rode the elevator going down into the heart of Nephthys, she was on her way to the main office of Olympus, to deliver her report to Tomas in person. It surprised her that Tomas left so soon, she thought that he wanted to be in charge no matter what else he said. But the day after he officially hired her, and gave her a document detailing her job and responsibilities, he spoke with the rest of the team saying how he had great fate in them, wished them good luck and left. Elias spent another week at Sedna coordinating with the security team and establishing new protocols and then he too left, and she found herself completely in charge, it was strange at first how everyone followed her instructions without asking any questions, even though she was new at the job. She had spent every waking moment of the past two months working on the alien ship, inspecting its technology, reviewing the translated portions of its database (they had a team that was working on translating the Union languages), and speaking with its AI, it has been established that it was in fact an artificial intelligence, one severely restricted, but an intelligence nonetheless. It pained her to be away from the project but she felt that she had been putting this trip off for as long as she could, and she knew that Marcus was up to the task of managing things while she was gone. She had been sending status reports to Tomas every two weeks, but they included only the overview of the work, as for everything else he said that it could wait until she was available to present it in person. She was very much surprised to see the ways things worked in Olympus, at first everything seemed insane to her, but as time passed she found that things worked, and worked well.

The elevator finally stopped on the Olympus offices floor, the elevator was one of four
, which were designated solely for Olympus use and no civilian could enter it without permission, just as only Olympus personnel were allowed on this floor. As soon as Seo-yun left the elevator a security officer greeted her and said that he would escort her to the Tomas’s office. As she walked, her thoughts turned to other things that she wanted to talk about with Tomas. With her position also came unrestricted access to all Olympus databases, she didn’t have time to look into those until a few days ago, and even then she hadn’t even scratched the surface of all the projects Olympus had in motion, not to mention those that were finished, one of the reasons she finally decided to come here was so that she could talk with Tomas in person about the things she found.  She couldn’t believe how much bigger Olympus was than what she and the rest of the world thought. Sure everyone knew that they were one of the strongest enterprises in the world, and everyone was wrong. Olympus wasn’t one of the strongest enterprises, it was the strongest, no other company had anywhere near as much resources, nor personnel. And she was amazed at the amount of things Tomas managed to keep concealed, Olympus was an empire. She believed that not even the world state leaders realized how much they depended on Olympus. More than 60% of the market was controlled by Olympus, although the public believed that the number was closer to 30%, as was always reported, which was already alarming, but what they didn’t know was that Olympus owned many smaller companies, companies that weren’t absorbed into Olympus, but nevertheless owned. That accounted for another 30% of the market. Concordis employed Olympus security instead of police in many cities, just as they used them for many state functions and events. Most air travel in the world was done by Olympus transportation. Olympus manufactured more than 70% of all military assets for Concordis and 20% for the League. It had monopoly on Energy and food distribution in Concordis. Olympus medical equipment were used in almost every hospital in the world. Frankly Seo-yun was appalled that the world governments allowed it to happen, so she went back and reviewed all the records from the start of the company, and realized how it happened. After the war the world was in turmoil, economy broken, people starving, governments just didn’t know what to do, the League and the Concordis were a short term solution. Until Olympus. She could see how the governments were relieved that someone took the problem off their hands, so they helped as much as they could, aiding Tomas Klein and his conquest without even realizing it, and as Olympus grew so did the standard of living. She could clearly see how the world governments let it happen without even realizing. Tomas was a very smart man, Olympus was always fair, prices were low enough to ensure growth of the company without being overpriced, and with their slow conquest of the markets it only became a matter of time before everything was controlled by Olympus. And even then Tomas showed his skill. He wasn’t greedy, he was patient, he kept everything available to everyone ensuring that no one would try to hinder his progress until it was too late, and Seo-yun was sure that the world still didn’t realize what he has done. The world was dependent on Olympus, without them the world economy would again collapse. Tomas Klein was the most powerful man in the world. For all intents and purposes he ruled the world. And his greatest achievement was hiding that fact from everyone.

She
finally arrived at the office and the secretary motioned for her to go inside.

“He is expecting you.”

Seo-yun opened the door and stepped inside the office. It looked more like a command room than an office, both the right and the left wall were screens six meters wide and three tall, the one on her left showed hundreds of graphs, statistics and projections, while the one on the right showed multitude of data that was constantly changing, faster than she could follow. In the center of the room was a pair of
comfortable
couches with a low table between them, at the end of the room was a so called “control desk” a variety of windows were open on its glass surface or were floating just above it, holograms similar to the one found on the alien ship, though much less advanced. Tomas Klein sat at the table his hand furiously working above the table, bringing up new windows or dismissing them with a gesture, two comfortable chairs were placed in front of the desk. When Seo-yun approached the middle of the room he cleared the desk of all the windows and then with a tap turned the wall screens off, they now showed a beautiful recording of a sunny day on a grass plane. He met her eyes and held her glare.

“So you’ve finally found time to look through the files.” He said with a slight smile.

“Yes, and there is much I wish to discuss with you.” Seo-yun replied evenly. He stood up and walked up to the couch on Seo-yun’s right, he sat down and indicated that she sit on the other. She hesitated for a second before relenting and taking the seat across him. He watched her calmly, relaxed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She studied him for a moment before finally speaking.

“How is it that no one knows
how big Olympus really is?” She asked.

“Oh, there are people who know, but they
, like everybody else simply don’t care.” He responded cheerfully.

“How can they not care? Olympus is a private company, a word from you can cripple the entire world economy.”

“It is human nature, as long as everything works, they don’t care, I have always dealt fairly with everyone, those in the government that know keep it hidden because it suits them, Olympus keeps the economy running, making their jobs easier, as for the rest, they ignore our expansion because dealing with us brings them money, and our removal would mean losing their wealth. As for those ignorant, they listen what the media tells them, and believe them, they have no desire to learn of things that don’t concern them, as long as they have a comfortable life, which Concordis provides.”

“That’s insane.” She said.

“Yes it is. And that is the way most everyone in the world operates, they follow the design set before them, they finish school, they get a job, they marry, they have children and they die. They don’t care about anything outside their own little world. I have created Olympus for people who wish to live different kind of life. A life that is a journey, a path, were they never stop, but always keep reaching for that goal at the end.”

“So you believe that having a family is wrong?” She asked, that part irked her a bit, she always wanted a family of her own.

“No, you misunderstood me. I have nothing against family, what I despise is monotony, it’s suffocating, it destroys good people, and it prevents progress. How many married people you know that have been together for years, who say they love each other, and yet they are miserable.”

She knew a lot, many of her colleagues were married, and she could see that they have lost something, not because they were married but because of the thing Tomas mentioned, monotony
, routine, that is the probably the biggest reason why people cheat, why they do things they wouldn’t otherwise. Not that everyone was like that, just most of them.

“There are many people within Olympus that are married” Tomas continued “But every single person in Olympus is there because they are like me. They crave something more than the ordinary everyone else holds as the utmost achievement in life. They want to do things that no one else has done, to be part of something else, even if they themselves don’t know what it is, they hear that call within themselves
, and they had the courage to reach beyond the path that they have been put on. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She said, and she really did understand. It took this conversation to make her see that the past months while she was working at Olympus were the happiest days of her life, she had always felt the thing that Tomas described, but until now she
just didn’t realize it. She had been searching for something, she had jumped from school to school, getting degrees in many areas, always searching for something she herself didn’t realize she needed. And now it seemed like she finally found it with Olympus. “I understand.”

Tomas smiled
. “I know that you do. That’s why I hired you in the first place.”

“We’ve gone off topic. Why did you really start Olympus? You have accumulated power and yet you don’t do anything with it. All you do is work
and expand, and I have access now, I know how much you work every day, you don’t indulge yourself in the slightest, anyone else with your kind of wealth would be spending it as fast as he could earn it. So tell me the real reason for creating Olympus, you have invested in every kind of research man could think of.”

Tomas looked at the wall to the green field and blue sky projected there
, he seemed to be studying it closely. She waited patiently until he suddenly turned his eyes and locked them with hers.

“
My first memory is of the clear night sky, I was in the wilderness with my parents, this was just before they died, I don’t remember why or where, but I do remember the stars, they are my first and clearest childhood memory. Ever since that moment I have been enamored with them, I have always wanted to reach them, to grasp them in my hand. You asked me why I built Olympus. I built it to fulfill my childhood dream, to go among the stars. Over time, as I grew that dream evolved from my reaching the stars to me taking the humanity with me. Everything I have ever done, was for that purpose, the ship we found has just accelerated my plans, but Olympus is my gateway to the stars.”

Seo-yun was struck by the intensity of his words, coming from anyone else it would seem as a childish dream, a thing
you might say if someone asked what your dream was. But coming from Tomas it had an entirely different feel. This was the man who built a worldwide empire, who could have ruled the world if he so wished, a man who had devoted his whole being to the purpose of fulfilling his dream.

“And what happens when you fulfill your dream, when you reach the stars?” She asked

Tomas smiled yet again, but this time his smile seemed lighter, warm. “You, Seo-yun, better than anyone should know the size of the universe, the number of stars in the sky. My dream is one that can never be fulfilled, a goal that can never be reached, and that is precisely why it is a dream worth reaching for.”

Hearing his words, for the first time in
a long time Seo-yun felt like her life was on a path that was right for her. She looked at Tomas, in his green eyes she saw a glint of something, a drive unlike anything she had ever seen. She looked at his face, his words were that of a madman, and perhaps he was a bit mad. He had to be, to do what he had done all for a childhood dream. There were easier ways to reach the stars, he could have become an astronaut, but instead, he conquered the world, and chose to bring all of humanity with him on the journey towards his dream.