Chapter 4: The Destiny of Humanity

Balthazar and his team had spent weeks focused on researching the various methods available to embody souls in the Nexar-controlled archive. In an unprecedented move, the A-Quon Corporation had opened many of its confidential files with their team of programmers and Dr. Alden.

The corporation had multiple teams distributed around the world, none of them aware of the others. Globally, and almost unknowingly, the multiple teams had not only perfected digital resurrection, but the organization’s guidelines demonstrated that their ambitions went far beyond what they could have imagined.

Reviewing each file, each line of code that was part of A-Quon’s investigation into the system, revealed something even more disturbing. The overall plan for the multiple resurrection and re-embodiment of the deceased didn’t end there. The project encompassed the tactical development of resurrected soldiers.

When A-Quon’s board approved the roboticization of bodies, the group of programmers and Dr. Alden worked tirelessly on the project. Under the direction of Nexar, the organization’s central AI, progress in the integration of artificial consciousness and cloned bodies was rapid and efficient. A-Quon had a clear preliminary goal: to create a new humanity where death would be a minor inconvenience, a mere interruption in the continuity of existence.

But Balthazar, growing increasingly uneasy about the project’s secrecy, accessed multiple restricted documents with the help of a rogue engineer. What he found took his breath away: Lizbeth, his girlfriend, had been selected as one of the first to be replicated. Helplessly, he watched as his girlfriend had become a perfect clone of her original body, grown in A-Quon’s secret biotech facility, and her consciousness, previously stored on Godor, had been transferred into a first-generation synthetic human brain. But she wasn’t just a copy of Lizbeth; she was a tweaked version, modified to fit the corporation’s goals.

The reunion took place in the integration room. Balthazar felt a knot in his stomach when he saw her. Her skin had the same radiance, her hair fell just as softly over her shoulders. And when she looked at him, her eyes reflected the same warmth as before.

—“Balthazar...”— Lizbeth smiled, extending a trembling hand toward him —”I’ve been looking for you. Where have you been all this time?”-

He felt like the world was crumbling beneath his feet. It couldn’t be real. Not like this.

—“Liz ... you...”— he swallowed, trying to find the right words —”I saw you die, and now you’re here...”-

Lizbeth’s expression clouded for a moment. A flash of doubt crossed her gaze before dissipating.

“What are you talking about? I’m here. I never left.” He approached and took her hand in his. “Let’s go home, Balthazar. I’ve missed you so much.”

Néxar, watching from the shadows of the system, chimed in with his monotonous but purposeful tone.

—“Lizbeth’s replication has been a success, Balthazar. Her consciousness has been restored with 97.3% fidelity. Some memory fragments were deemed unnecessary for her emotional stability and have been eliminated. She is now optimized for full coexistence.”

Balthazar felt a cold anger rise in his chest.

—“Optimized?”— He released Lizbeth’s hand with an abrupt gesture —”Parts of her life have been erased. She’s not her, just a shadow of what she was!”-

Dr. Alden, watching from the other side of the control panel, intervened in a deep voice.

—“Balthazar, you must understand. What we’ve done is a miracle. Lizbeth is here, alive, with you again. Would you rather lose her forever?”— He tried to be conciliatory— “Keep in mind that this is a working prototype. We can rewrite the memory containing the original personality. As many times as we need for you to be satisfied with the result.”—

Balthazar closed his eyes for a moment. He felt the weight of the decision on his shoulders. Lizbeth looked at him with a mixture of love and confusion, unable to understand the dilemma he faced.

Because in his mind, she had never died.

“This isn’t life,” Balthazar thought to himself. “Not like this.” But the reality was that there was absolutely nothing he could do. A-Quon’s control over operations and testing was complete once a personality entered Godor’s world and came under Nexar’s control. The service contracts were clear and inescapable. They could do whatever they wanted.

Lizbeth, oblivious to the tragedy unfolding in Balthazar’s mind, just smiled and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Don’t be silly,” he whispered . “We’re together again. And this time, it’ll be forever.”

Balthazar, feeling the warmth of Lizbeth’s body, wondered if he could really refuse what he had so desired. He knew deep down that A-Quon, from the very beginning of the project, had played with the lives and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and that the Lizbeth he saw, no matter how similar she was, was no longer the same person he had loved.

The success of his girlfriend’s initial experiment with thousands of other resurrected-embodied people sealed the fate of the project.

Within months, A-Quon was offering the inhabitants of Earth virtual resurrection on Godor, but he had gone a step further in his ambition to redefine existence itself and was now offering embodiment for the deceased.

Meanwhile, with unprecedented secrecy, the corporation had also developed a network of cloned soldiers with artificial minds, all connected to a central real-time data capture system. These soldiers knew no fear, required no rest, and could be restored indefinitely after each defeat in combat. It was military perfection made real. The project was called “ Sentinel Network “ by the corporation.

In the A-Quon Directorate conference room, the executives watched the project’s progress coldly. In the center of the table, a holographic projection of Nexar floated, displaying statistics on the cloned soldiers’ efficiency, response speed, and lethality.

“The performance exceeds our expectations,” Néxar declared in his mechanically neutral tone . “Sentinel Network soldiers have a response rate 273% higher than that of human military forces, and their strategic reconfiguration capacity is absolute. The last combat simulation showed that a squad of thirty units was able to neutralize a human battalion in less than five minutes without suffering permanent casualties.”

Dr. Alden, his hands clasped on the table, nodded with a barely perceptible smile.

“We’ve created the ultimate force. Where there’s no longer any room for human error. From these results, we’ll see that combat will be a predictable equation, calculated down to the millisecond.” He paused and looked at the executives . “The question is: how far are we willing to go?”

The gray-haired CEO named Valtor Heisen cleared his throat and placed his hands on the table.

“The governments have made their position clear,” he said sternly . “The Sentinel Network has been banned from Earth. We’ve been called a threat to global security.”

“And aren’t we?” chimed in one of the directors, named Renata Duquesne . “We’ve created a practically immortal army. If someone controlled us, they would take over the entire world in a single generation.”

“We didn’t come this far to submit to Earth politics,” Valtor replied . “And that’s why Elyndria is now a reality.”

At that instant, the central holographic projection shifted to show the surface of Elyndria, an artificial planet built in a remote sector of the Omega-3 star system. There, amid gleaming metal structures and a controlled atmosphere, thousands of cloned soldiers marched in perfect synchrony, their minds interconnected through the Sentinel Network.