Soon he would be prepared for his neglectful Father's return and would greet him with a smile and a probably not bloodless coup. He had been pawn of his Father's machinations one too many times. Soon, the young ambitious Prince would be master of the game.
Jacob started as his Mother called at him loudly from the door. He had been wrapped up in his play time again, not listening. His Mother's voice sounded harsh, she did not like food left to cool on the table. Jacob sighed and put away his toy prince and chancellor, and with large sweeps tumbled the knights and militia back into their castle box. His Mother watched over crossed arms as he scuttled inside with a mumbled apology and placation. Jacob was quite the project, but she could see he was learning the lessons she imparted well enough. He would grow to be a good man.
Peter listened tensely as Janet and Jacob did their nightly dance downstairs. Judging by the quips that floated up through the cracked open door he was safe to continue his report. His cover was as intact as ever. A secure link carried the message of his progress. He worked for a chemical plant as a plant, stealing secrets discovered while working on top level government contracts. The computer link connected him through a series of relays and mis-directions back to his native country. In the impending conflict those secrets would give his beloved homeland the upper hand. Over a decade of work was painfully close to paying off.
Nichol received Peter's communication, decrypted it and added it to the database for custom built virtual laboratories to analyze. The information would indeed have given this Godless country the upper hand were it not for Nichol and his program inserting specialized errors into the reports as directed by the agency he served back in Peter's country. Once the v-labs were thoroughly on their way to completion Nichol placed a call back to his superiors and made a terse coded report in complex double speak. Anyone listening would have learned no more than that two friends managed to keep contact over long distances and years of separation.
The communications were monitored, along with every other scrap of information energetically transmitted by a ship floating in orbit over the spinning blue planet. N'gak'lii and Rep'su'sus'lin hissed in conversation about the N-Grav Ball tournament being hyper-cast to their monitors from the Home System as their sub-brains controlled limbs to work at categorizing the massive data flow. Soon the disparate tribes of the world spinning below would erupt into the conflict the two had helped design. It was N'gak'lii's sincere hope that the resultant radiation levels and chemical changes to the biosphere would give rise to more interesting life forms. Rep'su'sus'lin was just in it for the laugh, it had been a boring few centuries for her.
The data was hyper fed back to the Home Ssystem. It was joined together with similar feeds from similar systems across the galaxy. Each one controlled by a team of coordinators, the results producing no small amount of income for Home System from gambling taxes.
Up in heaven an Ukiel shook its haloed head. The mortals were so involved in their distractions that they still managed to fall one spiritual step short of perceiving the fate strands the angel's played like harp strings. The music wasn't always sweet but it did seem to please the Almighty. Of course Ukiel had never seen the Almighty directly, such a thing was forbidden.
On the throne most high the Almighty sat. Eyes that could not be denied peered past the angel's that circled, with averted gazes as they sung in praise. The Almighty looked past them, past the veil of worlds, past the denizens of Home System in their far reaching Empire. The gaze went past the mortals on the spinning planets in all their shades, past the gulf of the underworld and into the face of the Opposer. The Almighty smiled and was sneered at back. Across the gulf of creation they played the age old game.
One dimension over DeltaWave771-G paused the subatomic process of the reality bubble freezing the Almighty and the Oposser in timespace. He intentioned shyly toward his Masterform a slight query. ThetaSpin54-H envisioned into Delta's probability and inflected a suggested alteration for maximum quantum result, colored ever so mildly with approval. Delta tried not to dissipate too much focus into a joy state.
Travis sat back from his keyboard and scrolled to the top of the story. He made notes on an index card of flow changes and could not stop himself from correcting sentences here and there. Once back to the end of the story, Travis added a final sentence, saved the file and posted it to his blog.
