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Chapter 24 - chapter 24

This is good. Most people would wonder why I'm trying to empower Earth's military so much. After all in the show they constantly go through with pointless invasions that rarely ever give earth any actual benefit.

Those people don't know that the earth has to constantly demonstrate their military power just to stay in the democratic order of planets.

Why does earth want to stay in an organization that has proven time and time again ineffectual and useless. It's because despite how useless they are often portrayed. They are constantly protecting member planets from invasion. Yeah the Decapodians and the Omacronians invaded earth a few times, but honestly neither were a very large threat and an extinction war is incredibly unlikely. Both want slaves when they conquer planets, this gives the democratic order of planets time to use their own member planets to lean heavily on rogue actors and force withdrawal.

In an extinction war the democratic order of planets actually makes themselves useful. Sure they're hypocrites of the highest order, but they refuse to allow their power base to be tampered with, any rogue actor trying to start an extinction war with a member planet would soon find themselves drowned in a tidal wave of disposable bodies from the hundreds of member planets of the DOOP, while Amazonia, Amphibios 9, Earth, Nylar IV, Chapek 9 (Newly joined yet already a powerful faction in doop) Vega 4, and Wormulon ,All the leading factions of doop, would coordinate efforts to immediately rush to destroy the threat.

However to remain as part of the powerbase of Doop you have to prove yourself in either technological development, commerce, or combat. Earth has long since stagnated behind the other planets in every category, barely holding on through countless invasions and winning wars with superior tactics, and sometimes just throwing bodies at the problem till it goes away.

It's not that earth wants to be part of doop, it's that they were coerced into joining after the second apocalypse during the invasion by Arcturus 7. An archaic planet of lizard people, where only 1 in 200 were born Scientist while the rest were born biological weapons. They wanted to destroy the inhabitants of earth and take the planet for themselves.

 Doop saw earth, that had just recently started recovering from the second apocalypse, as a prized jewel. The planet had abundant resources, humans which had short lifespans and so reproduced quickly, and they had just proved that they could both destroy and rebuild a world all on their own with primitive weapons and even more primitive terraforming tech. 

So DOOP offered to deal with Arcturus 7, in exchange Earth would become a member planet. They were just one of the hundreds of planets that were brought in but Doop used them to fight their wars more and more often, until Earth had a reputation for being DOOP's loyal bloodhounds. 

Any dream of leaving DOOP once earth recovered was gone, if they ever did they would be destroyed by the hundreds of enemies they had made on DOOP's behalf. DOOP wouldn't even have to lift a finger to deal with Earth, their enemies would do it for them.

It wasn't until president McNeal took over office that Earth became an actual leading powerhouse in DOOP, through countless backroom deals, rapid military expansion, funding for new military technologies, countless invasions of planets that made no sense but displayed the superiority of Earth's military. 

The thought process was easy to understand. We're stuck in DOOP, but we can become a leading power from inside and have actual control. Those who know Futurama know that Nixon was like McNeal on steroids. He took the same basic premise and brought it to its logical extreme. He took over the military side of DOOP completely. It wasn't a terrible idea but it definitely wasn't as nuanced as McNeals plan. It ended up binding earth to DOOP forever. Making it so inconvenient to detangle the two that it would be impossible and impractical to separate the two.

I shake my head. That was a long tangent. I look over at the professor who is currently getting a checkup from Dr. Cahil. He looks good. In fact he still looks super excited like a kid being given a new toy. I laugh and head over to the two of him.

"So how is he doc? Any side effects." I ask after all we did just whip this up in a few weeks.

"He's perfectly healthy, in fact I think the nanites are actually reinforcing his neurons and nerves. He will continue getting stronger and stronger with his biotics over the course of his life, not to an extreme degree mind you, but stronger nonetheless." the good doctor said in a surprised tone.

"So we overachieved rather than just hitting our mark." I said with a smile. It was a good day.

The professor smiled at me but then his face turned serious. "Fry, this will be the last time I can devote time to one of your projects for a while. I have my own studies to do. I have an experiment I haven't been able to focus on for a few months now. It's time for me to get back to it. Luckily with everything I've learned from the projects we've worked on it should be far easier."

I knew what he was talking about. He wanted to make gunter a sentient monkey, and while I did feel bad for the little monkey I decided to let events play out as close to the original as I could get. Considering Amy and I had already graduated college.

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It had been a month and a half, and something interesting did happen in that amount of time. A new Mars U Semester was starting and i was being invited (bribed) to come teach a course on advanced robotics. I wanted to turn it down but i knew that the professor was the one that got them to send me the request because he wanted me to be around for Gunter.

I told them I would give some lectures for a month to make sure Gunter was settling in well, then I would return back to earth.. The professor was doing the same thing. He made his course the mathematics of quantum neutrino fields to ensure no one would take it just so he could leave after a month as well. 

Bender was actually interested in heading to mars u to check out his old alma mater as well. Leela was coming to act as the professor's assistant and amy was coming to act as mine.

Yes we were screwing off for a month and that damn near gave Steve an aneurysm since we were all senior staff, but we promised to do our work remotely for a month and since we didn't really run any contracted deliveries we just shut down the freelance side of business for a month.

Amy was actually pretty excited to head to Mars U as an assistant instead of a student. Especially since her breakthrough in topical translocation has revolutionized how earth companies ship goods. Anything on earth was now handled by teleporting shipments to warehouses where the shipments would be taken by hover trucks to wherever they were needed locally.

This innovation has actually made Amy one of the most respected scientists of her time. She's even on the short list for a Nobel prize. All earth military ships are currently being retrofitted with a personal teleporter. Sure they take more energy to power than 21st century earth, but with antimatter generators and engines that's actually not a big problem.

The rigellions are pissed as their own technological niche was annihilated by an earth woman. There were some attempted assassinations, but the assassins' heads were sent back to their planet in boxes. No one has tried since.

Speaking of scientific breakthroughs, biotics were now being rolled out en masse after being passed by the Earth Security Council, and the EFDA. so far over 100,000 soldiers have been outfitted with artificial eezo nodes, and biotic chips, this was because biotics actually cost less to manufacture than cybernetics. Nanobot foundries were nothing new and all these nanobots did was follow a slightly different program and held a different payload. 

The only really costly part is the biotic chip. That wasn't even expensive due to the materials but due to the new vi i installed allowing for all biotic abilities. Only allowing the interested party to choose the 3 most suited for their combat style. This wasn't some arbitrary number either. The nervous system just couldn't handle so many different programs running at once. It would fry before they ever reached the "biotic god" stage.

The total list of biotic abilities was as fallows 

Pull/Lift: Lifts enemies into the air, making them defenseless. Priming them for a throw to launch them.

Throw: Hurls enemies or objects away with force. Often combined with pull/lift.

Warp: A distortion field that shreds armor and barriers, dealing damage over time and detonating biotic combos.

Singularity: Creates a gravity vortex that traps and damages nearby enemies.

Biotic Charge: The user rushes toward a target, dealing impact damage and restoring barriers (signature Vanguard move).

Shockwave: Sends a ripple of biotic energy along the ground, hitting multiple enemies.

Barrier/Backlash: Creates a protective shield that boosts survivability or reflects incoming fire.

Stasis: Freezes enemies in a stasis field.

Reave: A powerful, long-range attack that damages enemies and restores the user's shields.

Nova: A high-damage, close-range area-of-effect blast.

Lance: A long-range blast of kinetic energy.

Annihilation: A constant, close-range aura that damages and primes enemies.

These were the abilities from the game but some programming savvy people in the military were currently studying dark energy physics to create new and better moves. That's the difference between futurama and mass effect. In mass effect if something works you don't question it and just use it until it breaks or a once in a lifetime genius comes along to understand it.

Despite my original disdain for earth for adapting dark matter engines without understanding the core of the technology. It's still leaps and bounds ahead of the reaper trapped societies that formed in mass effect. A lot of people here did have a genuine scientific spirit.

That's not the only mass effect inspired breakthrough I've had lately. Since I've been fiddling with using dark matter/eezo in more technology I've also made some new weapons. In specific guns, energy shields, and armor. 

Earth's military's guns right now are pathetic. Laser rifles that resemble wind up toys. Of course these are only for ground troupes. The true military elite such as strike groups and black ops teams get way better weapons but they're expensive to make and maintain so they can't be rolled out to the general masses. I came up with a new solution.

Mass effect weapons work by using dark energy to manipulate gravitational forces to accelerate microscopic grains of high carbon steel or tungsten to ludicrous speeds. This sounds a lot like regular conventional weapons, but we've already tested it and it has more penetrating power then mid tier laser rifles. Cellular destruction tech is not used commonly in wars due to even shock troops uniforms having anti-Cellular-distruction tech built into them.

The shields work by using electromagnetic forces to repel any object approaching the danger threshold between 30 to 35km/h this was to prevent the awkward occurrence of your shield pushing your chair away just because you tried to sit too fast. Still depending on which shield you use they're priceless on the battlefield.

Finally the armor comes in 3 tiers, light, medium, and heavy. Light armor made for shock troops can withstand low intensity laser fire for about 10 minutes unshielded. Medium intensity laser fire for 5 and high intensity laser fire not at all. They also carry enough power density to allow a shield to recharge within 5 seconds depending on the cooling materials available. Which for the cheapest shield model means withstanding one full burst of high intensity laser fire without cooking in your suit. 

The medium tier armor meant for operators can withstand low intensity laser for 15 minutes unshielded, medium intensity for 5 minutes, and high intensity for 30 seconds. It carries enough power density for a medium tier shield to regenerate and cool in about 3 seconds. A lifetime on the battlefield but in the board room it sounded impressive. 

Last was the heavy armor. This was the beast made for the true backbone of earth's military, black ops, and strike forces. It's more or less a powered exoskeleton with a ridiculous amount of tech in it to keep it maneuverable but it's prohibitively expensive. It can withstand 30 minutes of low intensity laser fire, 15 minutes of medium intensity and five minutes of high intensity. It was my magnum opus for military gear and I wouldn't even wear it.

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