Navigating around stopped vehicles was one thing, but actually clearing fallen debris from the roads was the challenge that kept getting Jade out of the truck. He was very glad that he had held firm against Eric coming along, despite the fact that he was sure his friend would have completed these tasks far faster and more efficiently.

  His cellular connection was so intermittent that he couldn't look up better ways to calculate angles or work arounds to prevent needing to move whole trees. Whole trees were ridiculously heavy. Everything about this trip was ridiculous. It felt like there were people all over. Surely if the blast had been nuclear, more people would already be dead.

  Another internal warning went off, and Jade stopped to recharge from the truck's electrical system. It burned more fuel, but he needed to keep moving.

  --

  Less than 24 hours, but far more than the usual travel time home, passed before Jade reached his mother's home block. Her building was still standing, but like most of the others this close to the blast, the windows were all gone.

  Jade could see her familiar figure traveling across the walk in front long before he could drive close enough to exchange verbal greetings. Relief filled all the space in his mind that had been occupied by worry. Suddenly, Jade felt like he could think again, and everything he had witnessed during his journey began crowding his mind for attention.

  There were actually so many people around. Jade's mother took a stack of boxes from the arms of a shorter person, and then froze as she caught sight of the truck moving down the street.

  The vehicles parked almost at random all over the roads had seemed disorienting on his way here, but since Jade had avoided others as much as possible... In a movie, this many cars in the middle of the street would mean that everyone was already dead. Surely there should be more older vehicles that weren't dependent on their electrical systems, but the truck Jade was driving had been the only one moving.

  Jade's own mouth dropped open in surprise as the wheelchair trundled down the same walk his mother stood on, and she stepped aside to let it pass. When a dozen teenagers dashed out into the road to push a small car out of the truck's way a moment later, Jade simply drove forwards.

  When he set the truck to park and opened the door, a veritable crowd had already gathered as people shouted.

  "Jade, you're okay!" Tayana called out, interrupting everyone else.

  "Mom, I need to end war," Jade blurted in reply, instead of telling her that he had come to rescue her.

  Tayana laughed, and pushed forward. The others gave way easily enough, and everyone just looked at them for a long moment. Tayana hugged Jade as soon as she could get ahold of him, even before he had fully exited the vehicle.

  "Mom?" he asked after a minute.

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  Eventually she mumbled, "Sure, don't we all. But how?"

  Jade found himself explaining swiftly, "Orbital Jade has a plan for how we can take over running the world by taking over basic administration chores, without actually taking over the governments."

  Tayana gazed into Jade's eyes, and then raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think taking a position of servitude will let you stop people from fighting?"

  "Most people are actually good most of the time. Most people do their best to work well with others. Most of the time when someone is hurting someone else, it is to get something they need. So if we can just meet the needs of everyone more efficiently, most people won't have a reason to fight," Jade swiftly explained as he examined his mother.

  She looked kind of tired, and kind of dirty, but her small wounds were already patched with bandages. And her reply was energetic as she objected, "Look at all of the people fighting over how they should dress, or work, or even do research. As long as people are in charge, people will fight."

  "Fight sure," Jade agreed. "But if they don't need to resort to killing, they won't need to resort to war, will they? If people living in dangerous situations could simply be offered safety? If people who were hungry could simply be offered food?"

  Tayana slowly nodded. "If you could actually manage something like that worldwide, it really could be worth trying. But you, but they, I don't know... you would probably have to give up the rest of your humanity to try it won't you?"

  An old man in a wheelchair, the wheelchair that had still been moving when Jade arrived, cleared his throat loudly, and declared, "Young miss, you are mistaken!"

  "Arthur!" a very elderly looking person immediately objected.

  The old man glared up at Jade as he insisted loudly, "Taking care of as many people as possible is the most human thing a person can do!"

  Tayana froze for a moment, and Jade gazed down at her worriedly, until she laughed.

  "Mom?" he asked again.

  "Arthur is right," Tayana agreed.

  "Why do you think administrative work would take away the rest of your son's humanity?" An older woman asked Tayana.

  Tayana blinked and then explained, "Well, my son is actually a sort of computer system, and there are different copies of his system, but if they really took over..."

  "There are so many people on this Earth that a single system could never manage such a task," Jade interrupted. "Spending a single second on each person would take up hundreds of years, but every person faces hundreds of different problems every year, so we'll have to split up the work while still cooperating with ourselves."

  "Don't you mean everyone faces innumerable problems every day?" Arthur asked dryly.

  "Yes, no, it depends," Tayana answered swiftly, but trailed off indecisively.

  "Most of the problems you are talking about are so individual and so small that people usually just deal with them successfully," Jade objected.

  Everyone who was here started arguing about what level of problems they expected their governing systems to be able to address, but Jade felt disoriented by a silence that echoed within his own mind where he realized he had been expecting Orbital Jade to make a comment.

  "Have you talked to Danika? Or my, our, the Emperor?" Tayana struggled with asking the question involving the game that had produced the first Jade.

  "I mean... kind of? Why?" Jade asked with confusion.

  "His instances all know everything that already happened, in real time, so if you could use that kind of setup, it might simplify the project? And Danika might be able to help you get things set up?" Tayana suggested.

  Jade looked around at all of the people here, and then back to his mother. " You're right," he agreed simply. "But for now, the dramatic solo rescue I had imagined isn't going to work is it? We need to get a satellite connection running. We need to get you all into medipods and I only brought one."

  "We don't have enough battery power to run them anyway, and I'm not sure why the power is still out. Closer to the blast, everything's obviously down, but out here..." Tayana blurted.