The five words arrived at the Winter Palace via the most secure quantum-encrypted channel, appearing as stark black text on a screen in Mikhail's private communications room.
"Father, he is here, too."
For sixty years, Mikhail Volkov had been the sole arbiter of the future. His knowledge was a unique, absolute power that had allowed him to bend nations and remake the world. In that single instant, his monopoly on destiny was shattered. The feeling was not one of fear, but of a profound, soul-shaking vertigo, as if the very ground beneath his empire had suddenly turned to liquid. Every calculation, every grand strategy he had ever devised, was predicated on the assumption that he was the only variable, the only ghost from tomorrow. Now, there was another.
He walked to the great globe in his study, the one he had spun with such confidence for decades. He looked at the vast, orderly Russian Empire he had built, a single, logical system under his control. For the first time since he was a penniless boy-baron, he felt the chilling touch of true uncertainty.
Back in Bangkok, Tsarevich Alexei did not wait for his father's reply. He knew communication would be slow, and the situation on the ground was evolving by the hour. He was the commander on this new, incomprehensible front, and he had to act. He gathered his delegation.
"The mission has changed," he announced, his voice steady despite the turmoil in his mind. "Phase one is no longer acquisition; it is intelligence. I want to know everything. Professor, I want your team to engage their scientists. Talk about theory, collaboration, anything to understand the principles of their energy source. Ambassador, I want you to learn how this man has integrated himself into the Siamese power structure. And Commander," he said to the quiet security chief from the Directorate, "I want you to find him. I want to know where he sleeps, what he eats, and how he is protected."
His team, trained in the absolute competence of the Regent's regime, dispersed to carry out their new orders without question.
Alexei then requested a second meeting with Miss Sirikit, framing it as a desire to "better understand the philosophical principles" guiding her employer. She agreed readily. This time, she took him out of the city to a small, unassuming coastal village.
What Alexei saw there shook him more than any army could have. The village was not a marvel of grand infrastructure like his father's industrial cities. It was something else entirely. Every modest bamboo hut had a small, silent power unit, providing limitless, free energy. In a central workshop, villagers were using advanced fabrication tools—primitive 3D printers and CNC mills—to create everything from complex fishing equipment to medical splints, downloading the designs from a simple local network. There were no foremen, no quotas, no state directives. There was only quiet, decentralized, individual creation.
"Our goal is not to build a factory to give a man a fish," Sirikit explained softly, as they watched a fisherman print a new, complex sonar lure. "It is to give every man his own factory and let him decide if he wants to fish or build a starship."
As they were leaving the workshop, a man walked past them. He was European, of indeterminate age, dressed in simple linen clothes. He was not physically imposing, yet he moved with a serene, unshakable confidence. He met Alexei's eyes, and for a fleeting moment, Alexei saw a flicker of the same ancient, knowing intelligence he saw in his own father's gaze. The man nodded slightly, a gesture of acknowledgment between kings of different universes, and then was gone.
"Was that him?" Alexei asked, his voice tight.
"My employer values his privacy," Sirikit replied evasively. But her small smile was all the confirmation he needed.
That evening, a secure communications terminal in the embassy came to life. It was a direct, text-only channel.
[You came a long way, Tsarevich,] the message began, the Russian script perfect. [I trust the demonstration was illuminating.]
Alexei sat at the terminal, his heart pounding. He typed his reply. [Who are you?]
[A historian, like your father. Just from a later edition. Let's call me Prometheus.]
[What is your goal?] Alexei typed.
[To give humanity fire. Your father's goal was to build a perfect, fire-proof cage to protect everyone. A noble ambition, but a limited one. I intend to give every man and woman a torch and see what they build. Or what they burn. That is the nature of true freedom.]
[That is chaos,] Alexei replied.
[That is evolution,] Prometheus typed back. [Your father has perfected the 20th century. I am here to begin the 22nd. Tell the Lord Regent his great game is over. A new one is beginning.]
The channel went dead.
Alexei leaned back, his mind reeling. He finally understood. This was not a rival for power. This was not a competitor to be bought or a state to be crushed. This was an ideological contagion, armed with a technology that could make his father's centralized empire of oil, steel, and rails completely irrelevant.
Prometheus did not need to conquer Russia. He just needed to offer its people a more tempting future.
Alexei turned back to the secure channel to St. Petersburg. His second report to his father would be much more detailed, and infinitely more terrifying, than the first. The war for the future was not going to be fought with armies or banks, but with ideas. And for the first time, his father was no longer the only one who knew how the story ended.