She likes him because he challenges her. And by “likes,” I mean she hasn’t killed him yet for challenging her. Or for being an arrogant ass.

No, the story about the MIT/CERN kid isn’t Deus’s backstory, but it apparently is a not-uncommon arc for child prodigies who grow up surrounded by a bunch of average brain types, then finally settle into some bleeding edge profession, and learn that they’re in the 50th percentile of the intelligencia 1%.

I think exponential intelligence is genuinely incomprehensible, because individuals or groups at one intelligence level really lack the tools to understand a group that’s, for instance, ten times as smart. Of course, “ten times” is impossible for us to really quantify anyway, because “ten times” what? The word “intelligence” is really poorly defined in absolute terms. I mean, if you’re good at math but can’t remember dates and anniversaries, are you smarter than someone who struggles to add 15 and 7, but has an eidetic memory? Or is the world’s best astrophysicist smarter than the world’s best diplomat? One can figure out what dark energy is, the other can save hundreds of millions of lives by preventing wars. How much does emotional intelligence factor in? Without it, we’d have a world of sociopaths. At a certain point, information throughput becomes a limiting factor. Is a once-in-a-generation genius who secludes himself and occasionally publishes some revolutionary mathematical proof “smarter” than The Machine from Person of Interest (which was a show where a massive supercomputer processed every video and phone call and text message, etc, and alerted the Feds to terrorist plots – which sounds terribly dystopian, but the inventor (the glasses guy from Lost) made it a closed system so the government couldn’t use it to spy. The bulk of the episodes revolved around the fact that it could also detect people plotting non-national level crimes like murder, so the inventor put a backdoor in that would spit out a Person of Interest, and they wouldn’t know if it was the perpetrator or the victim. Anyway, I thought it was an entertaining show.) You’d probably say that The Machine in this case wasn’t intelligent at all, but throughout the series, it demonstrated an ability to learn and had a non-human intelligence that allowed it to stay ahead of the evil government agencies and corporations that wanted to abuse its abilities.

The point is, actual capitol-S Super intelligence is one of those things that are on Archon’s short list of Apocalypse level threats, because it’s very likely that the individual with that ability could out plot, plan, and prepare the entirety of the rest of the human race. If Deus built a suit of armor or a rocket powered paraglider and wore a goblin mask so he could rob banks, no one would give a crap about him on the macro level. Instead, he has the resources of a medium-sized-and-growing country and access to alien technology and probably demonic magic. So he’s being watched by a lot of agencies and interests. Some think he might become an exploitable resource, but they’re dumb. I mean, literally, compared to him, they’re very very dumb. Of course, that’s not to say he’s the only super intelligence on Earth. But most of the known ones are more like Digit. Focused on tangible sciences and engineering, not his broader approach to economics, diplomacy and politics.

Obviously Deus has some broad-spectrum approach to resisting chemical influence in place. After all, he’s the leader of an up-and-coming, expanding nation, and seems to be, on the surface, doing a good job for the people under his administration. And he’s making enemies of every surrounding country and eventually he’s going to start hitting countries that third parties have financial interests in. Third parties like diamond oligopolies, mining consortia, all kinds of larger criminal organizations, and eventually, whole countries. Not to mention the Alari colony ship. They’ve agreed to live under his rule, but what that really means is they do whatever they want within their little fiefdom, which amounts to the area they’ve expanded their ship into, plus some extra land they negotiated with Deus, but outside of that, they’re subject to the laws of Galytn. They would immediately assume authority if something “happened” to him. That’s assuming they could keep Thothogoth from using Galytn as a foothold for his own conquest, or that either of them could stand up to the Supers in Deus’s military.

So Deus has some preventative measures and contingencies in place, they’re just not super overt like most comic book Super Smarts do. You know, an army of Deus-bots, or a metal throne room with Kirby-esque pipes and energy fields full of dots that project force fields that can only be deactivated after he delivers a monologue.

Sexy bodymod news lady Gail has a special one-on-one interview with Tournament Quarter finalist Saraviah Nightwing! And if you subscribe to Gail’s Space Patreon, (which, due to the vagaries of Earth and Gal-Net’s DNS servers, happens to be the same as the Grrl Power Patreon, go figure) you can see that same interview in the nude! Well, eventually. The nude part of the interview, as well as the version that includes shading will be coming soon. Of course, you can view the interview in the nude now if you take your own clothes off. You know. Technically. Just put a towel on your chair first.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.