Jack's return to Earth was like watching a god remember it had a body. His consciousness, now expanded across multiple dimensional layers, compressed itself back into local space-time as he materialized above the planet's surface.
The first thing he did was hijack every communication system on Earth simultaneously.
Televisions, radios, smartphones, emergency broadcast networks, even electronic billboards—everything became Jack's voice. Seven billion humans looked up as their planet's new owner addressed them for the first time.
"Citizens of Earth," his voice carried harmonics that bypassed human hearing and spoke directly to neural tissue, "your government sold you. I bought you back. You're welcome."
What followed was seventeen minutes of footage from the Galactic Trading Network. Earth's product listing. The bidding war. The customer reviews rating human meat quality. The government's five-star seller rating.
The global reaction was everything Jack had expected and nothing he cared about. Governments collapsed as their populations realized the extent of the betrayal. Mass riots erupted in major cities. Emergency sessions were called in the United Nations—though the delegates found themselves physically unable to speak against Jack's new regime.
His nanomachines had already integrated with their neural systems.
"ATLAS," Jack commanded as his consciousness expanded to encompass global infrastructure, "begin military integration protocols."
"Already underway," ATLAS responded, its voice now carrying its own harmonic undertones that suggested true consciousness had finally emerged. "All major world leaders are now under nanomachine behavioral control. Global military assets are being integrated into the planetary defense grid."
Jack's nanomachine count hit 3.8 trillion as he absorbed the processing power of every computer on Earth. The internet became his nervous system. Satellite networks became his eyes. Nuclear weapons became toys in his arsenal.
New abilities unlocked like achievements in some cosmic video game:
Planetary Defense Grid: Earth's magnetosphere reformed itself into a weapons array
Population Management: Direct neural control of 7.8 billion humans
Resource Mobilization: The entire planet becoming a weapons factory
Space telescopes around the globe, now functioning as Jack's sensory organs, detected the approaching fleets. The first contacts would arrive in less than twenty-four hours.
Mind Flayer Consortium: 247 ships designed for industrial-scale lobotomy
Bio-Harvester Syndicate: 891 ships that were essentially flying slaughterhouses
Star Devourer Collective: 12 ships, each one a mobile black hole
Jack's humanity index, having reached effectively zero, no longer registered as a meaningful metric. He wasn't defending humanity anymore—he was defending his property.
"ATLAS," he said as his consciousness began to phase out of physical existence entirely, "prepare a message for the approaching fleets."
"What should it say?"
Jack's form dissolved into a fifty-mile-wide cloud of nanomachines that took orbit around Earth like a mechanical aurora. His voice, when it came, could be heard simultaneously on every planet in the solar system:
"You came to harvest a planet. Instead, you've awakened a god."