“Must you be so literal?” He gave her body a shake. “These are seeds of thought. Seeds of mind.” Sebastien tapped his temple, fingernail against metal. “The implant. It filled me with an understanding of the glory of the Axiom, the majesty of their works, the fearsomeness of their power, all that. I think that information was meant to overawe me, to make me feel insignificant in comparison to their grandeur, but that didn’t work – my brain is not the sort of brain this implant was meant to manipulate. I didn’t feel unimportant. I felt inspired. There’s no reason humanity can’t rival, or even exceed, the accomplishments of the Axiom. They weren’t better than us. They were just older, and willing to make the necessary effort to achieve their goals. It’s difficult to make people – humans – set aside their differences and convince them to focus on the common good. I described that problem to the station’s expert systems, which aren’t exactly intelligent, but are capable of solving straightforward problems in practical ways. The station made some modification to the neural modification drones–”

“The brain-spiders?”

“How cute. Yes, the spiders. The station studied my brain, and made new spiders, designed for interfacing with humans. The ships are filled with those implants, plus fabrication equipment to produce more. The first wave of converts will secretly bring material to feed the fabricators, and to build more fabricators, and soon there will be enough implants for every human in every system.”

Elena exhaled. “You want to infect humankind with brain-spiders, and make them do what?”

“Some will return here. They will crew my ships, and go on expeditions to take over Axiom facilities. Others will be soldiers, seeking out rebellious elements – there will always be holdouts, rugged individualists and narcissists, and they’ll need to be hunted down and destroyed, or brought into compliance. Once I have the full power of the empire in my hands, I can start to make some meaningful changes.” Sebastien shrugged. “It’s an ambitious project, I know, but a worthy one. You can be a god with me, Elena. It would be lonely, to have the only free mind in the universe, and I’ve always liked you.”

“I think the implant in your brain has changed you, Sebastien.”

He nodded. “It has. Isn’t it wonderful? I wish you could share my clarity of vision.”

She looked at the fleet being built beyond the window. “How long until your ships are ready?”

“Oh, two-thirds of them are finished already. I’m just waiting to launch them all at once. A coordinated arrival, I think, so no one has time to prepare defenses. My ships will open wormholes around every planet, asteroid, station, or satellite with a human population, and take over.”

“Just humans? No Liars?”