Rui paused for a moment as he considered the plausibility of what she was asking of him. Frankly, he didn't mind trading with the Pluralist Faction and the ——o-o- Cell if that was what they wanted in return for selling him information on the location of other Divine Mothers.
However, a part of him didn't trust the Pluralist Faction. If they were willing to betray their own civilization and sell out their own people to outsiders, then he found it difficult to trust them at all. It was possible that she would feed him information that would lead to a trap where he would get ganged up on by multiple Divine Mothers to eliminate him.
'I'll just have to pray that my prophecy is good enough to avert such an outcome.' Unfortunately, this war was too grave of a threat to human civilization for him to get out of without undertaking some personal risk.
Ultimately, he considered the deal to be worth it. However, the question was whether it was viable.
The first and perhaps the most significant impediment he could think of was Article Two of the Gaian Alliance Charter, which stated that 'no human individual, group, or entity shall conduct trade or levy any transaction with any entity external to human civilization deemed to be a threat of civilizational security and officially recognized as an enemy of human civilization.'
The Gaian Alliance had already recognized the arakai as an enemy and a threat when it invoked the Central Command Emergency Act and created the Central Human Command which Rui was the supreme commander.
Violating Article Two was definitely something that he was unwilling to, it would throw their entire civilization into turmoil if the Gaian Alliance Charter was violated so blatantly. It was not worth it. He would rather just fight it out against the arakai head-on than violate the Charter.
However, there were ways around it. He could have the Security Council amend the details of the recognition of the arakai as a threat. He could exclude the ooo—o- Cell and others like it from the list, thereby allowing him to legally forge a free trade agreement with the Pluralist Faction.
He could force the issue, of course, but it was better if he sold it to the powers of his civilization first. Though most polities would be on board with it since it represented opportunity. The hardcore imperialist factions of human civilization would be very much against it, but alas, they would have to suck it up.
Rui nodded after some thought. "It will take a little bit of time, but I can arrange what you see from me. How exactly do you intend to conduct trade with us if we're this distant?"
It was what ultimately hampered trade with the laminar integuments, even though they still maintained a good relationship with humans.
Rui nodded after some thought. "It will take a little bit of time, but I can arrange what you see from me. How exactly do you intend to conduct trade with us if we're this distant?"
It was what ultimately hampered trade with the laminar integuments, even though they still maintained a good relationship with humans.
"It will take time for the actual trade to develop; that is not something that can be done in a short amount of time, but just the pact alone would be enough for me to dodge treason charges," she replied. "That should be enough for the purposes of your offer to me."
Rui nodded. "Alright, very well. I accept your condition. Does that mean you accept my offer?"
"I do, but I cannot do my part until you do yours," she replied.
Rui nodded. "Fine. But I would like this agreement formally written down and acknowledged. I don't know if you guys do contracts or something else like it."
They did, but he pretended not to know.
She simply waved her hand, causing two strange flat cloth like pieces of web to float down before him. On it were burn marks in the shape of letters and words listing out the terms of the agreement in both the common language of the human civilization and in the script of click, which comprised of only - and o.
Rui could read both, but he simply swept his eyes through the human words before nodding. "Do you guys not do signatures?"
"That sheet of web is my signature; it is web that I produced. Normally, proof of commitment to contract is done by producing paper from the web of all involved parties. We do not have 'signatures' like you humans do, but you may sign, given that you are not arakai."
When Rui was done, the deal was finalized, although it meant very little by itself given that there was no enforcing authority. Contracts were merely formalizations of verbal agreements in the absence of civil enforcement.
Still, they were both on the same page and stood to gain a lot from this arrangement, and both sides had little incentive to deviate from the agreement.
"With that done, I'll get to paving the path to a free trade agreement with the relevant cells and human civilization," Rui remarked, taking his copy of the agreement with him. "Good doing business with you."
11:53
Naturally, their meeting had come to an end. Rui had gotten what he had come for.
"Before you go, I wanted to ask you about something," she remarked, growing more serious. "Recently, there were two informational anomalies, as I am sure you're aware. The first was a profound shift in the Universal Web, one that occurred only at the informational level."
Her expression grew serious. "It was unlike anything I have ever seen. I am sure you sensed it as well."
Rui nodded, growing thoughtful. "I did sense it. It made me worried about whether the virus was taking over the universalis mensis."
He was lying, of course. He knew exactly what caused that anomaly.
It was none other than Ria breaking through to the Sage Realm. He had been worried about that event giving Ria away, but the Divine Mother feeling the need to bring it up was proof that he had been right to be concerned about it.
"No, this time, it had nothing to do with the virus," her six eyes sharpened. "Not to mention, shortly after, a garbled virus SOS spread through the Orion Star Strand."
"I remember."
"Well, what you might not know is that we had our virus branches try to decode the garbled message as much as possible, even though its origin was not traceable. However, we managed to decipher one and only one word from the garbled message."
Her six eyes shifted towards him.
"'Key.'"
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