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  General Jones said: “Folks, I realise that, on the surface, it doesn’t look too good, but I believe if we face this storm together, in unity, we might just be able to turn things around. We gotta remember we have a continent to defend. Right now we got millions on the move; children, the elderly, the disabled. It’s our job to protect them to the best of our ability. And I am convinced that every single member of Operation Defensive Arc will do exactly that.” Terry watched as Jones stared out from the screen before concluding: “If there are no changes, I will give an update brief at the same time tomorrow, but by then I’m confident the invasion will have begun. Good luck everyone. That is all.”

  Terry looked at Napier. He thought he saw her eyes glisten. She said: “My god, we don’t stand a chance, do we?”

  Terry said: “Until we can find a way to fight back effectively, we must meet the invasion with what we have to hand, and hope for the best.”

  “Yes,” Napier replied, her voice cracking. “Let’s hope for the best, then.”

  Chapter 52

  23.23 Saturday 18 February 2062

  DEPUTY GRAND VIZIER Waqas lit a new incense stick and glanced at his brother Saad, who remained motionless. Waqas took a step back to stand next to the third brother, Affan. Waqas threw a confident glance at Affan, who met it with a look of equal assuredness. In front of the two men, Saad stood with his back to them, and Waqas reflected that he and Affan were the only two men in the entire Caliphate whom Saad could trust enough to turn his back on.

  Saad turned to face his brothers and a sense of reverence surged inside Waqas. Waqas trusted and relied on Saad’s unique sense which allowed him to see things he shouldn’t be able to see, to judge others’ feelings with unnatural accuracy. Saad had saved them all countless times on the path to domination, from slitting the throats of false allies to sowing just enough doubt and misinformation to wrong-foot opponents and turn them, with a mixture of bribe and threat, into supporters.

  A scent of weak jasmine invaded Waqas’s nose and coloured his thoughts. His breathing slowed and he sensed Affan next to him also calm with patience for their older brother. Both knew when to wait on Saad’s pleasure. The three brothers enjoyed absolute supremacy over two-hundred-and-sixty million subjects of the Caliphate, and the two younger brothers owed their positions to their older sibling.

  Waqas glanced left, past Affan, and looked through the vast window at the mosques, palaces and other luxurious dwellings of Tehran outside. Small coloured lights dotted the view. Tehran had been rebuilt as Saad, the Third Caliph, wished it, with every sign of the previous regimes removed. In his mind’s eye, he reviewed the key details of the plan, the plan which had been decades in the making, the plan which, in but a few hours, would see the New Persian Caliphate begin its irresistible rise towards world domination.

  Saad turned around, faced them, and spoke. “Brothers, do you realise that today it is twenty years since we joined the First Caliph’s forces? Look how far we have come. And this is but the beginning.”

  Waqas recalled that they’d only been junior officials then, running errands for obese old men whose time would soon pass. The three brothers grasped at once what could be achieved by the technological advancements made in the West. And now, through subterfuge, a little bargaining and a great deal of violence, the oldest brother sat at the summit as the Third Caliph.

  It might so easily have never come to pass. It was seldom certain, at least to Waqas, that Saad acceding as Third Caliph was ever assured to happen. So many times their plans might have gone wrong; on so many occasions, they might have been found out and disposed of, disappeared like the thousands of opponents—both suspected and real—of whom Saad had now disposed. But as his brother always said: it did not matter how one fought, as long as one did not lose.

  The First Caliph brought the countries and tribes together. There were endless summits and negotiations about which the rest of the world knew nothing. In those years, times were tense but violence infrequent. The First Caliph created the New Persian Caliphate through his appetite and passion to force a resolution to the brutal violence which had plagued the tribes of the Middle East for centuries. The First Caliph had focused on the shame, the endless, unyielding shame of Allah’s chosen subjects living and killing each other like pigs. He appealed to the violent ones who took Allah’s word in vain, to strive to regain the historical achievements and enlightened education that Muslims had enjoyed in earlier centuries. With some success among his better educated subjects, he drew parallels between how the Christians misinterpreted and abused the words written in the Bible during the time of the Conquistadors, and how the violent Muslims misinterpreted and abused the words of the Qur’an in the twenty-first century.

  To bring understanding and unite the many and vastly disparate factions who called themselves Muslim became the First Caliph’s life’s work, and it went on to cost him his life. With the support of the Chinese and Russian governments, the First Caliph brought peace to areas of the Middle East which had known only the most brutal strife and bloodshed for decades. But this peace came with conditions. The First Caliph closed the new supranational entity off to the outside world. There could be no interference or provocation from outsiders if the Caliphate were to succeed. Anyone could enter the Caliphate if they wished, but no one could leave.

  At this time, in the late 2040s, two key technological advances allowed the Caliphate to coalesce and then to consolidate: super artificial intelligence and the construction replicator. On one of those occasions when they were alone together, Saad often discussed with his brothers which of these two inventions made the greater contribution. For Waqas, the closest historical parallel was the formation of the United States of America, and how the steamboat and the railway and the telegraph had facilitated the management of a continent-wide country, the first time in history that a country of such size had been viable as a result of technological advancement. What the railway, steamboat and telegraph were to the USA in the 1840s, artificial intelligence and the construction replicator were to the New Persian Caliphate in the 2040s.

  However, the entire project was thrown into serious doubt when the First Caliph died suddenly. Seeing the danger, his closest advisor moved quickly to quell confusion, dissent and anger at suspicion that the First Caliph had been assassinated. For Waqas and his brothers, the question of whether or not the First Caliph’s demise had been a natural consequence of his strenuous workload soon became moot when his advisor acceded and became the Second Caliph.

  As the 2050s dawned, the impact of the new technologies grew exponentially. The Second Caliph ensured his cities had construction replicators to build schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, and then they built multi-lane highways to link all of the Caliphate’s major conurbations. On these new highways ran super-AI controlled vehicles capable of efficiently and reliably moving millions of people during key religious festivals. In a few brief years, super AI coupled with autonomous vehicles ensured the required food and medicines reached all corners of Caliphate territory. Societal development which a mere twenty years earlier would have taken decades, if it could have been accomplished at all, now required only a few years. The Second Caliph’s popularity soared. His reputation spread. People in the region flocked to join the Caliphate. More and more countries were subsumed and assimilated, and the old Middle East became the New Persian Caliphate.

  But through it all, Waqas and his brothers considered that the Second Caliph’s rule lacked ambition. Worse, he neglected defence. At the time, it seemed the rest of the world had other concerns in other regions, in addition to the unfolding, multi-layered disaster of global climate change. The Second Caliph truly believed in peace, but he was also foolish not to see the limitless possibilities of a properly organised and fully armed Caliphate. Waqas’ and his brothers’ thoughts turned to broader questions of the Caliphate’s place in the world. Why should the greatest Caliphate that Allah, in His wisdom, had brought into existence not expan
d indefinitely? Had not the time now finally arrived for the conversion of all humanity to Allah’s will?

  Under the Second Caliph, Waqas and his brothers gained promotion in the civil service in Tehran. He smiled when he recalled how the three of them had used their privileges to explore potential options with the assistance of an independent super AI unit. His older brother saw the possibilities in an instant. At length, Waqas realised that Saad had harboured such ambitions for many years, but only with the aid of this technology did he see a way forward, a daring and radical plan to change the course of history.

  Waqas expressed his doubts, but his brother’s energy and vision and determination infected him. He shivered when he recalled the most dangerous days in 2055, when the three of them decided to move. They’d spent years building a network of supporters who shared their vision, but for a few days the tension became unbearable. Like all such environs, the court of the Second Caliph seethed with rumour and conjecture and lies and backstabbing, and Waqas’ brother knew they had to be the best to succeed.

  But they did succeed, and after the eradication of potential opponents, Saad secured his position as the Third Caliph. Looking at the night outside, Waqas suddenly realised that he’d almost forgotten the leaders of the other factions who had vied unsuccessfully for the ultimate prize. He mused how soon those who failed were forgotten.

  Once his brother was installed and his potential enemies disposed of, the Third Caliph set about realising his plans. Waqas was not scientifically minded, but he could still remember the presentation by a professor from one of the technical universities, about how their super AI had discovered, apparently by accident, a clever and lethal way to exploit a particular type of particle called a muon. He still remembered the excitement in both of his brothers at the realisation that this could give the Caliphate a military advantage which would place it years ahead of its enemies. Within days, the super AI had designed weapons and the facilities to build them.

  However, the Third Caliph also insisted that an army of warriors had to be created and trained. The small standing army which the Second Caliph had maintained would act as the concentrate, its contempt of and hatred for all non-Caliphate subjects to spread like the essence of tea in water to infuse the new recruits. Once again, super artificial intelligence used the sum of human knowledge to design and implement the most efficient and effective program, taking rural, uneducated boys from the age of ten, and then drilling them aggressively in martial prowess and religious indoctrination.

  Waqas smiled at the richness of the irony: in the past, people had expected the machines to be dumb; dumb like robots which performed menial tasks. No one had thought it would be the machines that would be clever, and the people who would be dumb. Super AI meant that an army of brainwashed, hate-filled young men need have no intelligence other than basic fighting skills and limitless loathing for anyone not like them. Caliphate warriors did not require tactical or strategic thinking ability, for the computers would do this. The warriors only needed to follow orders and kill every thing that had to be killed. Their immediate superiors would be advised by superiors who were advised by the computers. But the lowest Caliphate warrior was only required to be the most basic, brutish creature intent on killing his enemies, nothing more.

  Waqas inhaled the scented air deeply. Saad looked at him and then at Affan. He said: “Tonight, my brothers, we begin the next stage of our journey. Europe will be crushed and dominated within weeks, and all the world will tremble at the new, relentless military power which we have created. All of the countries which truly matter: China, India, Brazil, and even Russia, will recoil in shock at the arrival of the newest military superpower.

  “With Europe put to the sword and all of its Muslims either absorbed or vaporised, and with the subsequent doubling of our territory, our power will be greater still. And as the infidel country which had tried to attack us with nuclear weapons found out, and suffered total annihilation in result, no other country will dare to attempt to use the same weapons against us. Therefore, we go into this battle already assured of victory.”

  The Third Caliph turned his back on Waqas and Affan. He said: “Let the invasion commence.”

  THE END

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