Brad's Point of View
The sensation of light hitting his closed eyes caused them to flutter open.
"Can you hear me, my love?" his wife asked.
"Yes," he croaked, his voice rough from disuse.
Brad blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted. Reka was hovering over him like a mother hen. "Can I get you anything?" she asked kindly. "You've been asleep for a while; we didn't expect the regeneration treatment to take this long."
Right, the regeneration treatment, he remembered. Brad got his bell wrung pretty good in that Russian missile attack, but the real issue was how the sound of the explosion wrecked his eardrums. That was months ago, long enough for them to develop a pill that could completely fix him up like magic, because it was magic.
If you didn't already know, Brad Regis was married to a succubus, who was formerly the Demon Queen in another world.
He held his arms out like a child wanting to be picked up.
Taking the hint, Reka used her supernatural strength to help him off the bed.
Leaning on his wife, Brad took a few uneasy steps. "How are your ears feeling?" she asked. "Any balance or equilibrium issues?"
"Negative, ma'am," he replied, his brain regressing back to military mode for a minute. "Just stiff, and after spending months practically deaf, sound sounds crazy." There was no point in lying to his wife; she could tell. She was magic.
Reka looked searchingly into his eyes. "Explain," she commanded.
Brad hummed a little tune; that confirmed it. "You didn't just fix me," he said. "You made me better. I think I have perfect pitch. I can tell when something sounds off, even a little. This will do wonders for my singing voice."
Instantly, all the layers of imperiousness and royal dignity that she clad herself in in public melted off of Reka Regis. "You can sing? Sing me a song!" she demanded like a child.
Her pouty face was so cute; Brad really couldn't refuse. A song from his sea shanty phase came to him instantly.
"Santy Anno gained a day~" he sang, surprising even himself with how clear and strong his voice sounded, how he could hear when he was just a little off-key and fix it instantly.
Reka clapped along happily, her obvious delight pressuring him to continue until the end of the song.
When it was over, she kissed his voice away, and when she pulled back her eyes looked quite mad. "You will sing for me every day from now on," she instructed. "Yes, yes," she said, more to herself than him, "I'll have the servants learn instruments and accompany him. A palace filled with music befits a Queen."
Reka was going to get her way no matter what, so Brad just accepted his fate like always.
"Oh, what a wonderful eternity we shall have together," she said, as if that was a normal thing to say. Taking his hand, she led him to the dining room of the royal apartments in Buda Castle. "Galiban has breakfast prepared, and we can speak of your future."
"My future?" he asked, puzzled. "What else am I going to be but be your husband?" Did she think marriage had an expiration date or something?
Sensing his discomfort, Reka quickly clarified, "We'll always be married," she said firmly. "That will never, ever change. I mean your future activities. Eternity is a long time, and you'll need intellectual stimulation."
That was a relief. Brad really didn't know what he would do if Reka decided to call it quits on their fiftieth anniversary or something. Living without her was unthinkable.
When they entered the dining room, Brad's senses were assaulted by an aroma that made him painfully aware that he hadn't eaten in two days. The smell of Galiban's cooking never failed to set his mouth to watering. Today it was poached eggs on toast with fresh fruit on the side. All the food was good, but Brad really never got over how delicious European bread was, even plain with nothing on it.
What chemicals do they put in American bread that make it so trash? he wondered.
"Your majesties," their butler bowed formally.
As they sat down, Reka's friend Julie, who lived with them because Reka said she did, came in shortly thereafter. "This is awful!" she moaned. "Those poor people..."
Brad looked at his wife. "Honey, what is she talking about? What people? Was there a natural disaster?"
Reka hesitated, chewing on a bite of poached egg to buy time. "I didn't wish to burden you with this knowledge when you only just awoke from your healing," she said. "When the battle turned against him, that awful Demon King deployed nuclear weapons."
He stood up instantly. "Gratin nuked us?" he asked in alarm. "How many are dead?"
"Fewer than ten thousand, Your Majesty," Galiban attempted to calm him down, "mostly Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians. These were tactical nuclear weapons, used to block our advance. The problem, as fair Julie alluded to, is that this has rendered large sections of southern Ukraine unfit for human habitation. It pleased Her Majesty to admit many new refugees, and it has been our task to find a place for them."
Brad sat back down, not apocalyptic, but still awful. "It's like if General MacArthur got his way in the Korean war. Were we able to get our people out, at least?"
"Dear Alice is fine," Reka assured him. "Her host was mostly automatons in any case. Unfortunately, her special friend, young Mr. Usyk, was caught in a blast in Mariupol. He is being treated in our finest hospital even now."
His name was Taras, Brad remembered. Cool guy, liked old video games Brad played when he was a kid. He had that same "secret badass" thing that Alice had. It wasn't surprising they were close, if that was what Reka was implying.
"Can we help him?" Brad asked. "Or any of the others? Radiation poisoning isn't like regenerating your inner ear."
"Absolutely," Julie said confidently, munching on her toast. "Galiban and I have been working on it non stop. Fixing the DNA damage is actually not all that different from regenerating any other kind of tissue, just more general in application. Once the people are out of the effected area, we can save all but the most acute cases, who will most likely die before we can get them help anyway. Cleaning up all that irradiated land, however..."
Brad shuddered to think about it. What a disaster. "Gratin has to pay for this," he said determinedly. "The world can't possibly tolerate much more!"
"Just so, my love," his wife agreed. "But this problem will have to be handled with care. I've already ordered our forces to pull back to a secure defensive line. We'll stop this mad Demon King for good, never fear."
She sounded so certain, but this was nuclear war, a nightmare.
Wait...a terrible thought occurred to him.
"Honey, do you know what a 'boomer' is?" he asked.
"Brad, we're all in our thirties now. We're the boomers!" Julie pointed out.
"Not exactly what I meant," Brad said, playing with his food thoughtfully. "I'm talking about an SSBN, er, a ballistic missile submarine, slang term is boomer." He held up his hands. "You know what, let's start again. There's this thing called the nuclear triad."
He noticed Reka was listening intently, so he went on. "There are three ways you can use nuclear weapons: delivery by plane, an ICBM, which is what most people think of when they think of 'nuking' somebody, and finally, launching a ballistic missile from a submarine. The submarine is key, though crews of SSBNs are actually looked down on in the Navy. It's considered a chill assignment for lazy people."
"Why are they lazy?" his wife asked.
"Because they don't do anything ninety nine percent of the time, just hide out in the ocean somewhere, stand watch, perform routine maintenance, and wait for the signal. You see, even if we shot down every Russian plane and destroyed their missiles in their silos, their subs could still strike back. There's a lot of ocean to hide in. Hunting Russian boomers was actually a big part of what my old boat did. You didn't hear that from me by the way, classified."
Reka tapped her chin rhythmically, a nervous habit Brad knew well. The gears were turning in his wife's head. After swallowing a mouthful of food, she addressed their butler, who was really a distributed super-intelligence. "Galiban, have we anything that might reckon with these 'boomers'?"
"Indeed we have, Your Majesty," he said confidently, serving Brad more eggs without being asked. "Approximately half of Russia's submarine force has been infiltrated by by little friends. As for those that aren't, they have to come back home for food some time, and my little friends are easy enough to hide in supply crates."
Brad remembered the Galiban beetle; he should've known there would be more.
"No major move against the Gratin regime will be attempted until we are absolutely sure his nuclear arsenal is nullified, all of it," Reka commanded.
Man, this is heavy stuff to talk about over breakfast, Brad thought.
Once they were done eating, Galiban cleared away their dishes and tidied up the dining room in that meticulous, elegant way of his. Brad recalled Galiban describing cleaning as "meditative" once; watching him clean was just as meditative. His smooth, precise movements looked so natural, so organic, artful and effortless, like watching a master painter whose canvass was cleaning.
"Come along, my love," Reka touched him on the shoulder. Without a word he got up and followed her to their living room where they sat down in front of his laptop.
"Open 'gram.com'," she instructed.
He typed in the URL and his browser loaded up a sleek, professional-looking website. "The world's first completely free education platform with unlimited AI-powered personal tutoring," he read the description out loud.
"Excellent, Brad, now summon Galiban," Reka said.
But wasn't he in the other room? Oh, there was a button on the website.
When he pressed it, a window opened and Galiban appeared, not dressed in his butler uniform but a polo shirt and slacks, pretty casual for him. "Galiban? Aren't you..."
"I'm here and there and everywhere, Your Majesty," he said, humor in his voice.
Right. There are many Galibans. "So what's the plan, professor?" Brad asked.
"Welcome to the Galiban Rubric Attainment Medium, or GRAM, for short, Your Majesty," Internet Galiban introduced the website.
"It is how we shall construct our 'brain drain', my love," Reka said excitedly. "Any person, anywhere in the world, can visit this place and learn whatever they please from Galiban. We shall discover the world's hidden talent and bring them here to serve me!"
Oh, Brad knew where this was going. "And I'm here to learn too?"
"Indeed, my love!" Reka said. "Ah, I nearly forgot. Take this pill."
He popped the mind-accelerator into his mouth. Drugs made learning fun! He felt it start working almost immediately; his mind felt agile and open and ready to be filled up with something. Brad started noticing little things, insights into mundane reality, the force distribution of the desk his laptop sat on, the fluid dynamics of the room's airflow, the...
"Focus, my love," Reka said, taking his chin and turning it back to the laptop screen.
"His Majesty appears eager," Internet Galiban said. "It is my understanding that nuclear engineering and mechanical engineering share many core classes. The King-Consort's intellectual broadening will begin there."
They dived in right away. The old "cheerleader-effect" he used to get from Reka sitting next to him while doing his homework was in full force, and Galiban was a great teacher. With these magic pills Brad was fully confident he could learn anything. Before long it was lunch time.
"Who knew dynamic systems could be so interesting?" Brad asked to nobody in particular. He looked at his phone and was shocked to see four hours had passed.
Reka nuzzled into his neck, "my smart man!" she said affectionately. "We'll be focusing on broad, general knowledge first: math, physics, mechanical engineering. Nuclear engineering, while a powerful school of magic, is somewhat overspecialized for our current goals. Our new space program is in the early stages yet."
"We have a space program now?" Brad didn't know Reka was taking him seriously when he mentioned that.
"Of course, my love. Once you have a firm foundation, you can study aerospace engineering at the graduate level, and work on our space program yourself! I know how you love those 'science fiction' novels. Well, soon you will be designing real spaceships!"
"And the omnifactories are nearly ready," Butler Galiban said as he brought them lunch. Julie was away, working with yet another Galiban.
His brain processed "omni" and "factory" with lighting speed. "A factory that can make anything? How is that possible?"
"A bit of a misnomer, Your Majesty," Galiban clarified. "Think of it as a factory that can rapidly retool itself, adjust on the fly, refine any process in real time. Anything it can do is saved by the software, and anything it can do once it can do again, repeatedly iterating as it reaches perfection. This is 'software-defined manufacturing', the perfect merger of code and machine."
The description sounded almost religious. If Galiban started talking about "machine spirits" Brad would start feeling concerned.
"All the brilliant minds of the world will marvel at how I can turn their dreams into reality," Reka added. "Rockets and satellites will be among the simpler things made in my land, and it will be a wonderful project for you, my love. Perhaps our children will sail the sea of stars!"
Did Reka just say "children"?