"By the way... when do you think His Majesty became an awakener?" Jeremy asked
Youssef thought for a moment, trying to come up with a timeline in which the emperor could have awakened without noticeably being absent from the public eye. But he couldn't remember a stretch of even a week since the founding of the empire where Aron hadn't made an appearance. "If it happened after the empire was founded, it was probably in the first few weeks. But that isn't feasible either... so he must've awakened much earlier than that."
The younger man nodded at the idea that Aron had awakened before founding the empire. He hadn't made that many public appearances at all up until The Last War, only showing himself when it was absolutely necessary, he was forced to do so, or when he introduced his first products.
"Even if he did awaken earlier, it just goes to show that he's a very patient man and seems to have hidden it quite well. I can't think of anyone I personally know that wouldn't parade their newfound powers around, trying to raise their statuses and get themselves some perks. None of them would care at all about any harm they'd cause by abusing their powers," he said. He thought of his half brother, who craved any sort of attention that would feed his ego, something Jeremy particularly despised about him.
But then something clicked in his mind and he said, "From what we just read, there are five known categories of mana. Doesn't that mean it's possible that he awakened some kind of mental ability through esoteric mana?" He recalled that, more than two years ago, Aron had created his first revolutionary product, BugZapper. That was the first falling domino that led to the formation of the Terran Empire.
The two men looked at each other, each of them thinking the same two words: holy shit!
If the emperor really had awakened more than two years ago, then he was monstrously strong in addition to being very, very smart. He had first built a business empire completely under the radar, along with the most advanced military force on the planet, all while manipulating entire countries like pieces on a chessboard and staying completely hidden. And as strong as his ability was then, when Earth was still a wasteland with almost no mana, they could only imagine how strong he was now, after years of the mana density increasing to the point where even normal people were beginning to awaken to it.
"But there's still something I don't understand," Jeremy mused.
"What's that?" Youssef asked.
"In his address, when he talked about mana triggering an evolution and giving people 'superpowers', there was a part where he talked about how it had passed a critical mass and that the mana density increase had become a self-sustaining reaction..." the younger man said.
"What about that don't you understand? I took a geology class in university and my professor talked about something that happened 2.4 billion years ago. It's called the great oxidation event, where the production of oxygen did the same thing that mana is doing now. It pushed almost all of the methane out of the atmosphere and creating the ozone layer. It's what let evolution start and multicellular organisms became the norm after that." Youssef didn't quite understand what Jeremy was talking about and, as he soon realized, had completely missed the mark.
"I'm not talking about that. That parallel is obvious. The great oxidation event allowed the evolution of multicellular organisms, and now the... I guess we can call it great mana event, is allowing multicellular organisms to evolve further. After all, the species on Earth now have basically been 'stuck', evolutionarily speaking, for a very long time.
"But what I meant was, if it's only reached the self-sustaining phase now, then before now, something or someone was artificially producing it in large enough amounts to bring it to the level where the process becomes automatic. So my question is, who, or what, was doing that?"
Both men broke out in goosebumps as they considered the possibilities. The best-case scenario was that it was Aron who was responsible for it, and the worst-case scenario was too terrifying to imagine.
"Why... why don't we ask someone? There's no need for us to drive ourselves insane looking for the answer on our own when we can just ask... right?" Youssef said, then immediately called for Nyx. Her entire job, if not her very existence itself, revolved around information and the hoarding thereof.
[What do you need?] Nyx asked. She'd been paying attention to the two ministers and had been surprised by how close to the mark they had hit with their blind speculations.
Youssef let Jeremy do the asking, since he was the one that had brought the topic up.
[You're correct,] she said, then brought up a recording of the fusion reactor beneath Avalon Island as seen through the lens of the Henry's Eye sensors on the Panopticon network. Then she told them about how that had led to their discovery of the incoming aliens, and their belief that it was the cause of the Earth's discovery by those same aliens. They needed to be up to date on that, and though it was included in their introductory data packet, they obviously hadn't reached that file yet.
The two men froze for quite some time and Nyx stood there, patiently waiting for them to digest the information she had just given them.
"So what about now? We've reached a self-sustaining growth phase, aren't we glowing much brighter, and from all sides?" Youssef asked after shaking off the daze he was in. Being numb to surprises helped shorten the time he was lost in shock.
[Imagine you're in a cold room. If you light a fire in the fireplace, that's the only heat source in the room so it'll be very obvious to someone standing outside the room. However, if you turn on the central air conditioner, the whole room heats up, so the change is less easy to pinpoint. That's the current situation-when the only mana source was the reactor beneath Avalon Island, it was very obvious, like a lighthouse on a dark night. But now the entire planet, and the solar system it's part of, is filling with mana.] She showed them images from before and after the "great mana event" as seen from the Panopticon satellites. [That's the difference, and why we aren't worried about the increasing mana density in the solar system. But we think the reason they managed to discover us is because of the flashing signal given off by the mana converter on the fusion reactor. Hopefully, by the time they arrive, the mana density will be high enough that our awakeners will have a deterrent effect on any potential hostile actions on the part of the aliens. That would at least be something of a silver lining to the whole situation we find ourselves in, at least.]
