Yue

 17th July

03:27 GMT

"What, you and me?"

"I was rather thinking of you and the Lantern Corps you're intent on gifting us with. But yes, I rather imagine that I'll be taking a lead from the Controller side." She looks at me curiously. "Do you know why?"

"Social cachet from your gamble actually paying off. I'd…" I look away for a second as I consider it. "You're a post-scarcity society. You have been for virtually all of your history."

"No, there's always a scarcity of something."

"Not food, shelter or consumer goods. Not the things most species -even quite advanced ones- think of when they hear the term. Why are there so few of you?"

"We intentionally limited our expansion so that we wouldn't overrun the universe. Something that was well within our abilities. We stopped breeding voluntarily to give the rest of you a chance."

"So… You value… What? Influence? Creativity?"

"Influence, mostly. As a species… We never really got fiction." Her face creases up. "I don't know why. Heru once suggested that it was because we'd never needed myths to explain things… That seemed a bit 'neat' to me, but he might have been on to something."

"Power rings -and my orange one in particular- are your development. Which means that you've earned the right to.. control how this happens."

"Well done. Six out of seven."

"And out of nine?"

She narrows her eyes slightly. "You know about those, do you?"

"Three guesses where the Guardians put the-" I make the 'seven-lines-radiating-outwards' sign with my fingers. "-for safe keeping. And which has at least one person capable of tapping into the black?"

She sighs in frustration. "What a fascinating planet you come from."

"Live on. I come from the Prime version, remember?"

She waves it off and returns her attention to her equipment. "Bah, we're getting off topic. My plans for this depended a great deal on exactly who turned up. You've been planning this for a while and you know you better than I do. How do you want this to go?"

"Three other members of my species have worn orange rings. Two started exhibiting extremely unusual behaviour almost immediately. The third had a mission… I didn't have the opportunity to talk to him while he was wearing it. And the Gordanian Admiral had an attack of megalomania when he put one on. I'm concerned about how stable potential recruits will be. And I don't want Controllers handing out rings to create fire-and-forget weapons out of people who want the Reach destroyed more than they want to live."

"Not unreasonable. But there seems to be a war going on."

"I have a list of names. People I think might work well for the first batch of recruits. I would teach them my techniques myself, and be on hand to bring them down if they started going off the rails. Though from what you were saying, having a proper Central Power Battery might help with that. Perhaps… Most importantly, I've also got the name of a man whom I think could run the organisation."

"You don't want to do it, but you know a man who does."

"I think he will. I need to.. check some things. Once we've got the Central Power Battery secured. And… Once that's done, he can probably come up with a way to screen potential recruits for the right psychological characteristics better than I can."

She looks back at me for a moment. "I may possibly have something to add to that."

"Most of the species we'll be recruiting from weren't even sophonts when you were last awake. And he's going to want to know that he has control over the organisation which he's organising."

"I'm.. not.. sure.. I.. like.. where.. this is going."

"The way I see it, orange rings -and the people who use them- work best when they're doing what they want to. We won't be finding the most avaricious people we can, we'll be selecting those who want things useful to us. Someone who wants to be in charge is going to want to be in charge."

"And what do you think we Controllers are going to do? Sit around looking pretty?"

"In theory, anyone with a connection to the orange light can make new rings. But it isn't quite that easy, is it?" She gives her head a small shake. "Larfleeze has piles of rings, but they all used to be people. We'll-."

"Except for the prototype Krona and I created. The very first orange ring. Bit of a kludge job, to be honest. We never thought that we'd use it in the field."

"Does it have any special abilities?"

"No! It was a first effort! I'd be embarrassed to see it now. No AI worth talking about, no control assistance… I'm much more pleased with the one I made for you."

"In future, you'll have the other Controllers to assist you. But my point was, your hold over the Corps comes from the fact that they need you for rings and guidance as well as everything you-. Ah, the other Controllers do for the Darkstars now."

"Unless you do that. I can feel the Ophidian in your personal lantern."

"Even better! You're very useful to them, they're very useful to you, but if relations totally break down you can both survive. Weakened by the separation, until you get over yourselves and patch relations over."

"You don't want us being in total control?"

"No, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Did you miss the nameplate on the door when you came in? I can't see the Guardians accepting that sort of deal with their Corps."

"Is it better for your ego to have people follow you because they have no choice, or for them to have a choice and choose to follow you? And in any case, I like to think that the Controllers still have the social skills necessary to negotiate the power arrangement."

"I wouldn't be so quick to overestimate us. We used to be Guardians, remember?"

"And then there's the Darkstars-."

"Who are used to us being in charge and will probably provide the majority of our recruits."

"I was going to say, who will need a new focus. And who don't have much direct contact with the Controllers save via their Director. They run virtually all operations themselves because that's the only practical way to do it. If the war was going to come more into the open… Well. You Controllers are capable of reshaping planets. How quickly can you build warships?"

"A good deal faster than we can now if we could replenish ourselves from a Central Power Battery." She looks pensive for a moment. "It's not a terrible idea. I'll want to talk to this Director-."

"Clarissi."

"Hah! Very well. This Clarissi candidate. Because your whole plan rather falls through if they can't hack it."

"Reasonable. Now, about Larfleeze…"