They stood on the balcony of their quarters in the temple and looked at the river down below and the city laid out beyond it.
“We begin a long journey today, bringing Earth out into the stars,” Allor said.
“Yes. It will take us many years of hard work,” Ova replied as she looked up at Allor. “But its work we will do together, and that is almost as important to me.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I know that the man I take as my husband still grieves for a love lost, a love destroyed. Vicious violence. But I am not jealous of this, and I don’t want to interfere with it. It shows me that my husband is a man capable of a deeper love than I can imagine. And if I am fortunate, if I am a good wife, a loyal wife, and a good companion, then if you love me just half as much as her, I will be the happiest woman on Earth.”
Allor leaned over to his bride and kissed her gently.
“Thank you for having patience with me,” he said.
“It would be hard to be cold to you, my love,” Ova replied.
The capital was swollen with people. The pilgrims were now joined with the tens of thousands come to celebrate the coronation and the wedding. Many had come to see the new ruler that had finally brought an end to religious wars.
Pens had barred horses from the capital. The streets had been cleaned and the displays of Ceros priests’ heads were taken down. Around the city Pens had stalls like those in the markets that dispensed information, food, and wine. Additionally, to mark the occasion, Pens had all new green robes made for himself, though green was definitely not his color.
There was a wheel outside of every public lavatory. It was large, it was wooden, and it had eight long push poles protruding out of it. Those who used the lavatory were expected to help push the wheel around three times, contributing to a manual flush sewerage system.
Merchants yelled out to the pilgrims trying to sell their wares or services. A man with a beautiful rug in front of him sat on a solid wooden chair. Laid out on a table next to him, he was surrounded by hundreds of human teeth he had extracted over the years. He was price haggling with a man whose left side of his face was swollen.
The ceremonies were not as elaborate as Pens had planned. In place of his two-hour coronation ceremony, Allor had agreed to a shorter event. Pens had commissioned the creation of a crown for Allor. No one placed the crown on his head. He did not kneel before anyone. The gold crown with red and yellow jewels sat on a pillow on the seat of the throne chair.
Pens spoke at length about the history of the Cult of Allor. He spoke at length about the misery, death, and horror caused by the cult of Ceros. He spoke about how Allor had told him many times that wisdom came not from how much you could hurt but from how much you could help.
Even Rom spoke, despite having consumed too much wine. He spoke about the alliance formed and sealed in marriage. Then, after losing his place or his train of thought, he laughingly sat down.
Allor crowned himself, picking up the crown and placing it on his own head. The cheers began in the temple then dissipated out along the streets. “It is done,” people yelled, and started cheering. And just as quickly as he had crowned himself, he removed the crown from his head and put it back on the pillow on the throne. They stepped forward from the throne and held up his hand for silence.
"Today, I bring you an end to war. Today, I bring you an end to slavery. Today, I bring you," and he hesitated for a couple of tix, "an end to all religion." He stopped and stood silent for a moment, looking at the crowd that seemed unsure of his meaning.
"Let me be unmistakable in this: when you see the remarkable from me, you are merely seeing technology you do not understand. For I have no god and am no god. I'm just a human like all of you, but one that possesses remarkable machines. That they came to me was an accident and my good fortune. That I can use them to return the sick to health is my reward. That I can use them to unite our people and finally be rid of the curse of the cults is the reward we all share. From today, let us live in peace with our neighbors.
"We come from the stars. The remarkable machines I use which are the reason people worship me as a god, these, too, come from the stars. Humans like us inhabit many planets beyond the sun. They have many things that can improve our lives, and they will share them with us once they are sure we are not a threat. So let us make the preparations required of us, move aside old things that divided us and caused us to hate. Let's begin the transition to a better world.
"So from this day forward, don't think of me as your God, only as your king."
Then Allor went back to his throne, moved the crown to the table just beside the chair, and sat down again.
Pens stood and walked forward to the pulpit. He motioned for Rom and Ova to stand.
“Today, King Allor takes a queen,” Pens said as he moved his arm to point at Ova. “Who brings this woman to be wed?” Pens asked.
“I bring myself, priest,” said Ova with a laugh. Pens was frowning.
Rom spoke quickly. “I bring her,” he said. Pens nodded with the look of a man who had been slighted.
The wedding ceremony took much longer than the coronation. King Rom spoke again. Still under the influence, his speech was sometimes rousing, but mostly just long and rambling. But he ended it well by referring to Allor as his brother.
Pens, displaying his propensity for structure and authority, spoke at length about the duties of a wife to her husband and his to her. It was not an enlightened speech and used old ways of thinking of women as property. Ova could be seen staring at Allor, her face red and getting redder every time Pens added more bondage to the list.
Finally the bride and groom pledged themselves to each other. They kept their speeches brief. And when the ceremony was complete, they walked together hand in hand out to the balcony overlooking the square in front of the temple. The crowds below cheered.
The wedding banquet was extensive with two long tables, each seating nearly one hundred people. They were served by many of the people that had been cured by their new king. It was during the banquet that Allor and Ova snuck back to their quarters.
As the king and his new queen joined together as one, in another room not far away sat two blasters, a cloaking pendant, and one PPS. And standing just around the corner from the room, cloaked and quiet, were two guards.
And as the king pulled his queen up on top of him, Koven entered the room with Rusa.
"This will make a good haul," said Rusa. "But I wonder why there are two weapons but not two pendants or two PPS."
"I don't know either, but we’re not going to be here long enough for it to matter," replied Koven.
He was wrong.
When they picked up the tech, the ship anchors fell from the ceiling with the nets trapping them. The noise was loud, and the floor shook. When a very annoyed Koven switched off his PPS in order to use one of the recovered blasters to cut through the net, the two cloaked guards struck them with clubs. Koven was knocked unconscious and Rusa received a significant jolt to her head, which contained her central command center.
As the king watched his queen collapse on him, her body still jerking with her ecstasy, a damage subroutine began to run inside of Rusa’s central command center. And as the program was loading into memory, a satellite rounded the horizon and came within direct communication with Rusa’s central processor.
Two of the most important questions ever asked are “What time is it?” and “What is the date?” And today was no different. So as the satellite came in contact with Rusa’s central processor, it recognized her electronic handshake and searched for items of interest to her. And it found a most urgent patch to her AI learning algorithms. And with the efficiency of a computer, it sent notice to Rusa’s central processor that it did indeed have important content for her and it would begin to transmit it immediately.
And as the king rolled his queen onto her stomach and she giggled and made a joke about not being able to make any future kings that way, the satellite began sending its significant upgrade to Rusa. And one of the first things done in a lot of upgrades, this one included, was a synchronization with the clocks back on Centrum Kath. Remember, it’s a most important question, and there are numerous logs that are kept of these sort of events. And in order to synch the clocks, it becomes necessary for the central processor being upgraded to surrender its time values and return to the values of 00:00:00:00:00:00 before accepting the upgrade. And Rusa’s processor performed this beautifully.
Regrettably, one of the first lines of code executed for the damage assessment subroutine was a simple command written millions of times: request the time from the CPU and write it to the damage log that is opened to write the damage assessment to file. But in this case, instead of getting the correct values, Rusa’s processor returned the value 00:00:00:00:00:00. But that was not a value that was acceptable to the damage subroutine.
As a result of this conflict, Rusa’s processor showed an error: please enter valid time. Since a time value greater than zero had not been entered, the damage subroutine concluded incorrectly that there was significant damage to the processor. In order to minimize the damage and to prevent any possible energy leaks from the thermal batteries, it shut down all Rusa’s functions until a value greater than zero was entered for that most important question.
Until then, Rusa would remain motionless, lifeless and of no bloody use at all.